You might know Kevin James as the loveable schlub from the CBS sitcom “King of Queens,” but the actor/comedian cranks it up a notch and goes full-villain in Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion‘s R-rated home invasion thriller “Becky.” James plays a bearded, bald-headed Nazi in a film that might as well be called “Paul Blart: Last Blood.”
The film has a rebellious 14-year-old Becky (Wilson) being brought by her father to a weekend getaway at a lake house in an effort to have her get along with his new fiancee Kayla (Amanda Brugel), and her little boy Tye (Isaiah Rockliffe) as part of the bargain. The problem is Becky wants none of that, she’s still grieving over her mom’s death to cancer. Becky is the sullen kid who has her reasons for being so isolated, she repeatedly watches old phone videos of her dying mom, a well-intentioned but flattening attempt by the directors at upping the ante in emotions, not to mention ground their main character with some kind of emotional heft — it doesn’t work.
The trip ends up taking a turn for the worse when five convicts on the run, led by neo-nazi Dominick (James) and his beastly lieutenant Apex (Robert Maillet), come to the door., decide to invade their home, looking for a treasure hidden deep in the basement grounds. Good thing then that Becky, after a fight with daddy, runs away before the home invasion begins, she’s off in her playhouse/fort in the woods when this happens. When she finally comes back, our young heroine decides to take matters into her own hands (cue in the slow and meticulous killings of each of these five bad guys, in creatively gory fashion no less).
The familiarity used by Millot and Murnion is surprising, mostly because of their last movie, “Bushwick,” which tried so hard to bypass conventional filmmaking. The problem is that “Becky” is laid on too thickly; a badass teenage girl takes on racist thugs, but without any of the cleverness one might come to expect with such a B-movie. The high points are the kills, the bloodier “Becky” gets the better, no, the problems rather lie in everything else. A lack of urgency invades the frames, there’s no sense of panic or fear that settles into the dramatic stakes, just clunky dialogue, and mediocre performances.
“Becky” doesn’t wear its B-movie heart on its sleeves, and maybe that’s the problem, we’ve seen this “one-person killing machine” formula done to death, most notably in “Taken” and “John Wick.” Having a 14-year-old girl taking over the reins of Liam Neeson and Keanu Reeves is somewhat of a refreshing antidote, but the genre tropes still stick like a sore thumb. There’s nothing original or new about “Becky,” even with James rendering a comfortably spooky performance as the main baddie. In fact, he’s the ultimate reason to check out a few moments from this film, proving that even Paul Blart can be petrifying.
Quiver Distribution and Redbox Entertainment will be releasing the film via digital/ on-demand release on June 5th.
I can confirm that Joel Coen’s “Jack of Spades” is based on Frances Frederica Montrésor’s 1901 novel “The Alien: A Story of Middle Age.” It’s a ghost story. A gothic mystery.