Review: Becky (2020)

Becky (2020)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, and language

Score: 4 out of 5

There are two ways to think of the film Becky. The first is "Die Hard in the woods, with a teenage girl as the John McClane figure", while the second is "Home Alone: The Fucking Hardcore Version". Either one of them works pretty well as a description of what you're in for: a brutal action thriller in which somebody way too young to be doing any of this engages in loads of very unchildlike behavior that has you questioning whether or not she's that much different from the sadistic villains she's facing, and given that the villains are a white supremacist prison gang, that's saying something. It serves up standout performances from Lulu Wilson, who frequently reminded me of a young Chloë Grace Moretz and demonstrated that her great performance in Ouija: Origin of Evil wasn't a fluke, and Kevin James, who strays very far from his background as a family-friendly comedian to play a sick and imposing villain. It also boasted sequences involving eyes, necks, sharp objects, and bad things happening to or with those things that managed to make even me wince, while creating an atmosphere where it felt like anyone, save for Becky herself (and then, only because the opening scene reveals she survived), could die. If you're a fan of violent action movies, this is one to keep an eye out for.

Becky Hooper is a thirteen-year-old girl whose life has gone to shit lately. She's bullied at school, her beloved mother recently died of cancer, and she's angry at her father Jeff for dating another woman, Kayla, and inviting her and her son Tyler for a weekend getaway at their lakefront home. The revelation that Jeff and Kayla are getting married caused Becky to storm out of the house to a little tree fort she has in the woods, where she's collected all manner of loose items she's discovered around the house. It's one of those items that invites the attention of Dominick, the ruthless head of a neo-Nazi prison gang who breaks out of the big house with three of his goons, seeking a key that he had hidden at the house a long time ago. What it unlocks, we do not know, but they show up at the lake house and take Jeff, Kayla, and Tyler hostage while they search for the key. They soon learn about the very bitter teenager outside, but only when it's too late do they learn how close to her breaking point she really was, and when they push her clean over it, there is hell to pay.

Lulu Wilson is this movie's anchor as Becky, a clearly troubled girl who was already on the edge of madness. She recently lost her mother, somebody who she loved more than anyone, and is angry at her father and absolutely despises his new girlfriend. Near the beginning of the film, seeing a group of smiling, happy people on their way to a family reunion causes her to storm out of the minimart she and her father have stopped at. She's become loud, disrespectful, and aggressive, and while it's portrayed as an undoubtedly childish response to tragedy, it's also an understandable one; you immediately get why she's acting that way. So when a bunch of criminals decide to threaten the only family she has left, she's already in such a mental state where sheer, unrestrained fury is her most logical recourse. The tiny Wilson is shown to be horribly outmatched against any of her foes in a one-on-one fight, so instead, she takes the Kevin McAllister route, laying traps and using improvised weapons and the environment around her to fight back. When she attacks, she wastes no time going straight for the jugular, literally in the case of her first victim, and every one of the kills in this movie was shocking in its extreme brutality. She doesn't just kill the bad guys here, she makes them suffer to the point where, by the end, it's not entirely clear if she's still somebody we could call a hero. Definitely a badass, though.

Coming in right beside her is Kevin James as the gang's leader Dominick, about as far away from The King of Queens and Paul Blart: Mall Cop as you can imagine. There is nothing humorous about Dominick; his most iconic scene here is a particularly nasty one where he has to cut his own eye out after the damage that Becky did to it, in a moment that establishes him as one of the toughest villains I've seen in any action movie. Right from the get-go, Dominick is a right bastard who we see has no problem with killing kids, his interactions with Becky's captive family quickly taking a turn for the racist upon seeing that Kayla and Tyler are black, and it's implied that he's after more than just money. He is an extremely driven foe who is more than a match for Becky, with James' performance establishing him as somebody who could easily command people who you'd think would have no problem beating the ass of a morbidly obese man like him. On that note, of his henchmen, Robert Maillet as Apex is easily the most interesting of the bunch, a soft-hearted giant who starts to question the increasingly evil things Dominick has him do. Physically, he's easily the scariest of the group and has no problem laying out an angry dog with a single punch, but he's also the least comfortable with what he's doing, and his fight with Becky goes in some interesting directions because of this. Joel McHale is the other comic actor in the cast playing a serious role here, and he too does a very good job as Jeff, somebody who knows that his love of his daughter is strained but is trying to break through to her, and wishes she could see things his way and embrace Kayla as a stepmom. Amanda Brugel doesn't get as much to do as Kayla, in what amounts to the Holly McClane role, but she does well with what she's given, especially a line where she tells Dominick that, because Becky hates her and won't listen to her if she tries to tell her to stop, there's nothing they can do to prevent a complete and utter ass-whooping.

The film looks good, too. It shoots its setting in a lakefront cabin and the surrounding woods the way a horror movie might, as a place where the killer could be lurking behind any tree or bush, but then turns that around and puts us in the killer's shoes in order to turn it into a Die Hard-style action movie. It's not a flashy film, but it gets the job done giving the viewer the lay of the land and showcasing Becky's most brutal moments. If there's any weak point in the film, it's in the writing, particularly where Dominick's plan is concerned. The film never actually explains to us what the key that Dominick's after is supposed to unlock; it's simply a MacGuffin that gets him and his gang to the house. One might guess that the key opens a safe full of money, but the way Dominick speaks about it, and the way Becky treats it at the end, it's implied that there's something else going on with it. This is a thread that, had it been explored further, might have fleshed out Dominick in particular, who is a pretty one-dimensional character who gets most of his depth from James' performance, and perhaps spotlighted the disquieting similarities between him and Becky that the film alludes to. As it stood, however, it felt strange, and not in a good way, like a weird distraction from the main plot of the film that didn't really do much for the story or the characters.

The Bottom Line

A gritty B-grade action flick with a clever hook, this movie serves up some vicious and clever thrills boosted by standout performances from Lulu Wilson and Kevin James. Check it out.