IFC Films
Start with a click. The rentCharlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (Sheila Vand) are looking for a weekend getaway, a place to celebrate a business milestone with their romantic partners: his wife, Michelle (Alison Brie), and her boyfriend, Josh (Jeremy Allen White ), who is also Charlie’s brother. The place they find seems like a dream, isolated in the forest, right next to the ocean, and if it’s a little expensive, well, the agreement that Charlie and Mina just signed will earn them a lot of money. On the trip, Mina wonders if her Arabic last name explains why her reservation was rejected an hour before Charlie’s was accepted, and a comment from the man who hands them the keys (Toby Huss) suggests she is right. But they’ve come all this way, and it’s only a couple of nights, also, look at that view.
The rent, which is the first film directed by actor Dave Franco, is a notable entry into the burgeoning mini-genre of Airbnb horror movies, largely because of the little twist it takes to the concept. The house Charlie rents is not a portal to supernatural torment like this summer’s You should have goneJust a place with a hot tub and too many rooms for all four to get into trouble. In a normal year, its release date would sync up with the holiday season, but with travel options limited to the domestic and the length of a car ride (preferably pee-less), the way it exploits the fuss of getting into in the home of a person you have never met you feel especially sharp.
Franco and his co-stages, Joe Swanberg and Mike Demski, let the tension build up naturally, as long as if it weren’t for the creepy music and sound design, you might think you’ve stumbled upon the wrong movie, such Maybe something sober. drama about two couples whose illusions are unraveled during a weekend in a country house. A lost comment from Josh raises doubts in Michelle’s mind about her husband, and a suitably diminished ecstasy lowers the barriers between Mina and Charlie, business partners who seem to be closer to each other than their loved ones. (Franco deliberately tricks us into introducing the couple with Mina looking over Charlie’s shoulder to see the list, with her head huddled on his shoulder until Josh enters the room.) Everything is attractive, if not exactly fascinating, like Spy on the couple at the next table when the tables were close enough to listen. The way Mina’s friends fold when she confronts the homeowner about her racism is a fissure that the film could have explored in greater detail rather than simply dropped, but Franco doesn’t push his actors to be overly emphatic, allowing them especially A girl walks home alone at nightVand, time and space to breathe, instead of always having to increase tension or push the frame forward.
Eventually, the vibe of the mumblecore hangout is cut short by the arrival of a creepy antagonist, though by then the movie is so close that it looks like Franco is trying to beat the clock rather than change course with no problems. (Unlike the Swanberg / Duplass sibling set Bag head, The rent He doesn’t have the wit to treat his abrupt tonal change like a gag.) The twist in the last act might surprise some viewers as a bold departure, but there’s so little urgency in that that Franco could have been doing. As a managerial exercise, a business card for any movie you really want to make. Compare it with Romola Garai’s Amulet, another first feature film by an actor arriving this weekend, who kicks in with a blood-red title card in gothic fountains and echoing chants that turn heads upside down. Or Natalie Erika James’ Relic, earlier this month, which also deals with secrets that spread in an unknown house. Those are movies their creators had to make, stories that had been building up inside them for who knows how long, while Franco feels like the kind of thing he would do if he had talented friends and a few days to kill. It is the Airbnb of movies, a brief stay with a pleasant landscape that leaves things where they were found.
