Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams must be used to life-and-death situations by now – after all, she took on the Night King and won.
However, even Arya might have been freaked out by the grim and twisted situation in The Owners, out now to buy in the UK on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes and other digital platforms.
Flipping the typical start to a home-invasion horror, The Owners starts outside the isolated house that will become the movie’s main setting. We’re with Nathan (Ian Kenny), Gaz (Jake Curran) and Terry (Andrew Ellis) as they wait for the house’s owners to leave so that they can break into their safe, said to contain a lot of money.
Nathan’s girlfriend Mary (Williams) complicates matters by arriving, but she reluctantly agrees to go along with their plan. Once they’re inside though, the safe proves a tough nut to crack so Gaz comes up with the idea of waiting until the owners come back to torture them for the combination.
Simple right? But little do they know that the house’s owners, Dr Richard Huggins (Doctor Who‘s Sylvester McCoy) and his wife Ellen (Rita Tushingham), have a dark secret of their own. The robbers have no idea the nightmare they’ve gotten themselves into and they face a fight to escape the house alive.
Signature Entertainment
Buy The Owners on Amazon Prime Video
Based on Hermann and Yves H’s graphic novel Une Nuit de Pleine Lune, The Owners isn’t the first horror movie to play with the conventions of the home-invasion genre. If anything, it’s probably less common nowadays to find a straightforward home invasion horror where everything is exactly as it seems.
What helps The Owners stand out from a crowded subgenre is that it revels in keeping you guessing about what actually is going on, even if you know that something is wrong in that house. Before director Julius Berg (who also co-wrote the movie with Mathieu Gompel and Geoff Cox) reveals his ultimate hand, you’d be hard-pushed to guess what’ll happen next as it hints at various twists.
A large part of its success is down to the performances of Sylvester McCoy and Rita Tushingham. Playing a very different type of doctor, McCoy is brilliant as the quirky Dr Huggins as he leaves you convinced one minute that he’s a stone-cold psychopath and the next that he might just be an eccentric old man. Tushingham doesn’t have as showy a role, but the interplay between the two is delightful.
Signature Entertainment
The rest of the cast don’t quite have as much luck in breaking out of the conventions of their roles. Anybody who’s seen a horror movie will quickly work out who’s not long for this world and, unlike with its approach to the genre, The Owners doesn’t upend expectations here.
Williams fares the best in the classic Final Girl role, yet remains thinly sketched and is hampered by some bizarre character decisions. As we know from Game of Thrones though, she excels with the physical side of the role as the shit eventually hits the fan (complete with a claustrophobic aspect-ratio change).
For some, The Owners might prove to be a bit too nasty as it certainly doesn’t shy away from either the gore (one sledgehammer to the head moment is particularly gruesome) or dark revelations. It’s certainly not a movie to be watched when you’re in need of a pick-me-up and doesn’t really believe in catharsis.
That will likely limit the audience for the movie despite the draw of the lead cast and the effectiveness of the shocks. The Owners is fairly relentless in its grim tone, but it’s never trying to be anything else.
The Owners is available to buy now on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes and other digital platforms, and will be released on DVD on March 1.
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