Serving as the third effort from writer-director duo, Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, Villains is a dark comedy that follows two lovers who have just robbed a gas station, Mickey (Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe). This was to be their last hit before making their way down to Florida where they plan to live the rest of their lives happily. However, when they run out of gas, and are forced to break into a big, fancy house in hopes of finding something to help them get a move on, they instead find a little girl chained in the basement, and soon find themselves at the mercy of the seemingly sweet, but deeply sinister residents, an older couple, George (Jeffrey Donovan) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick).
The premise is simple, but it’s a good one. Stick four people, who are each varying degrees of bad and crazy, and see what happens. The filmmakers know how to get mileage out of that premise thanks to a great tonal balance. There is plenty of humor to be found here, but it’s all rooted in character quirks, sly subversions, and “oh my God, how could this situation get any worse” levels of tension building. It’s impressive, especially in how each of the characters are given a lot to do, and each are given and equal amount of screen time within its fairly short 89 minute runtime.
Of course, due to this style of storytelling, it lives and dies by the performances, and there is no disappointment to be found here. All the actors here are wonderful. Everyone is clearly having fun digging into these offbeat characters, especially Donovan and Sedgwick, who are gloriously over-the-top – Donovan with his punchable grin and deep Southern drawl, and Sedgwick with her unpredictable and thoroughly bizarre psychosis, which makes her interact with the world around her in ways that are equally terrifying and amusing. But then there’s also the central relationship between Mickey and Jules, which is surprisingly sweet and earnest. They’re two dopey people, madly in love, and while they’re prone to bad decisions, you can’t help but root for them, and the two of them are a blast to watch together.
The filmmaking itself is solid, if not particularly stylish, aside from a couple interesting flourishes. It struggles to maintain a sense of momentum for the whole thing, leading to some points in the second act that drag a bit. But the biggest thing that comes close to a problem is really the fact that anyone into genre cinema has seen something like this before. The idealistic suburban looking family with a dark underbelly is a common motif, and Villains doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in adding anything new to that theme. Plus, there were points where I felt the filmmakers were holding back a bit. The film could’ve afforded to get meaner, more lurid, more violent, it often teases something much more shocking than what it ultimately delivers. This is something I feel most mainstream audiences could easily digest. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it did sometimes leave me wanting it to go further than it did.
However, I was overall satisfied with Villains. It’s a solid piece of entertainment that commits to a bit, and sticks with it while also offering a surprising amount of heart. I did wish it had more going on under the surface, or went nastier with some of the story beats, but at the end of the day, these gripes don’t really detract from the experience as your watching it. It’s fun, light on its feet, and the cast is so damn likable, you could watch them forever, and you genuinely care for them, hoping they could find a way out of their predicament. It’ll probably play well when you watch it with a crowd, be it at a theater, or with a bunch of friends at home. It’s a thrilling and twisted little genre exercise that doesn’t demand too much of its audience, and sometimes those do just the trick when you just want to watch something fun.