The rental

“ The Rental was inspired by my own paranoia about the concept of home-sharing, and I think the best way to contextualize the film is with a quote from the founder of AirBNB: “We want to build a website where people publicly post pictures of their most intimate spaces: their bedrooms, the bathrooms— the kinds of rooms you usually keep closed when people come over. And then, over the internet, they’re going to invite complete strangers to come sleep in their homes. It’s going to be huge!” - Dave Franco

We understand the importance for some actors to have more control not only over their image but also the desire to offer films that correspond more to their tastes. The fact that many of them want to one day move on to directing shows this desire to offer films that are more personal and in which they can reveal a greater part of their personality. With the Rental, actor Dave Franco (Now you see me1&2 (2013-2016), The Disaster Artist (2017), Six Underground (2019)) gives us his first film, which he co-wrote with Joe Swanberg. The original idea that renting a house or an apartment that should be a heavenly place to escape can turn out to be a real hell could have been put in the hands of a seasoned director like Eli Roth (think of the successful Knock Knock (2015)). The film also features David Koepp (Secret Window (2004), You should have left (2020)) and Marcus Dunstan (The Collector (2009), The neighbor (2016)...), a spellbinding and disturbing thriller in the tradition of the horrible thrillers of the 80s that put forward psychopathic killers like Jason Voorghes, Michael Myers and others. In this case, because of a faulty rhythm and a rather badly used background music, The Rental looks like a horrific thriller that lacks a lot of spice despite the presence of an interesting cast.

From the very first minutes of the film we discover the four main characters, Charlie (Dan Stevens), his brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White) and their two friends respectively Michelle (Alison Brie) and Mina (Sheila Vand). To take their minds off things and strengthen their bonds, they decide to move to a beautiful house facing the ocean following a reservation on a rental site. Yet what was to be a dream weekend will reveal secrets of the past, including a secret affair between Charlie and Mina and above all confront them with a dangerous calculating psychopath who not only wants to control their actions but also wants to harm them and make them pay for their mistakes. The action of the film thus takes place practically behind closed doors in this rented house and in its close surroundings. Admittedly, this subject is not new and one unfortunately guesses too easily that these main characters are destined to a tragic end.

The real question that one asks oneself when discovering this film is to know what are the indispensable keys to succeed in an excellent horror thriller and unfortunately this one seems to have completely forgotten them. As the movie saga Scream reminded us so well, there are rules that are essential to succeed not only to survive in a horror movie but also not to disappoint the viewers. In this case, it would have been better to start the movie with a memorable scene and not a flight over this beautiful house near the sea or a search on a website of the characters Charlie and Mina. In the same way, in this type of horrific thriller, one should not only know how to make perfect use of music to create a disturbing atmosphere, but also be really inventive in order to trick the main characters (repeated hammer blows seem to show a total lack of visual research).
After a good half hour that seems long and whose presence seems only justified to artificially inflate the duration of the film, the action finally starts after a first murder that will finally bring out the real villain of the film and his way of solving his problems.

Yet the Rental also has some real assets starting with the presence of the main duo Dan Stevens (lead role in the Legion series (2017-2019) may also be seen in The Beauty and the Beast (2017), Lucy in the sky (2019)).
and the all too rare and talented Alison Brie (the Community, Mad men, Glow series...). Unfortunately, the numerous flaws in the script don't help them to give the necessary depth to their characters. We won't even talk about some of their scenes that would have deserved a better treatment. In this case, The rental seems to have lacked as much development time as a comfortable budget to deliver a story that would have deserved a cinema release and not as in the United States in VOD and in a reduced circuit of theaters (the closure in the United States of many theaters due to the coronavirus explaining this).

In the same way The Rental raises the same question of whether the distribution of a film should be done in a homogeneous way worldwide in all cinemas and then in VOD to end up with a video release or in this case while this film will be released in France exclusively in cinemas if, as in the United States, a VOD release would not have been a better choice. It's easy to understand that some films deserve to be discovered in theaters but this is not the case of The Rental which is only a minimalist horror thriller. Certainly, the last minutes of the film raise the level of this movie but overall, we come out of it disappointed...

The Rental
Directed by Dave Franco
Produced by Dave Franco, Elizabeth Haggard, Teddy Schwarzman, Ben Stillman, Joe Swanberg, Christopher Storer
Written by Dave Franco, Joe Swanberg
Story by Dave Franco, Joe Swanberg, Mike Demski
Starring Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White, Toby Huss
Music by Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans
Cinematography: Christian Sprenger
Edited by Kyle Reiter
Production companies: Black Bear Pictures
Distributed by IFC Films
Release date: July 24, 2020 (United States)

Seen on July 24th in VOD

Mulder's Mark: