Inheritance Is A Thriller That Finds Its Danger In The Depths Of Family

ROUGHLY HALFWAY THROUGH INHERITANCE, Maya, a daughter abruptly dislodged from her life of grief, finds herself in India. Without language, experience or even the help of a map, she checks into the crowded streets of Delhi before boarding a sunlit train to the relative calm of Mumbai. It’s like a rite of passage — the street, the stations and the chaos that can undercut your sense of self. Maya is ogled, confronted and even pursued by unidentified men. It’s a different matter that she’s chasing something herself. Because in the context of her surroundings, a white woman pushed against an Indian wall is as triggering as it feels unintentionally relevant. Inheritance is a lean, low-fat thriller that finds its footing in the explosive depths of intimacy. Be it between a clueless woman and the tasks she must complete, or a father and the daughter he has never been there for.

Phoebe Dynevor plays Maya, a young woman slowly sliding off the rails after the death of her ailing mother. Her estranged father, Sam, played by the dependable Rhys Ifans, shows up at the funeral unexpectedly. “I can’t believe he came”, people around Maya whisper in what is a cold opening to the caustic dynamic that defines much of the film’s journey and almost the entirety of its destination. Maya, who needs a bit of rescuing herself, is offered work by her father. The details of his work life are speckled by mystifying trips, a vague recollection of particulars and paraphernalia — including a bogus passport — that suggests that he does more than just sell real estate to rich guys who don’t need it. Prodded by his daughter, Sam confesses that he has in the past been a spy. The speed at which he gives in, though, raises a hint of suspicion.

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Shot entirely on iPhone, Inheritance is a nifty, at times puzzling caper that travels the world, but is determined to only glance at it with the wobbly aesthetic of a hand-held camera. It means the Egyptian pyramids in the background look inauthentic, and the madness of the streets feels ultra-charged. There is this sense that nothing we are watching can fully be believed. Maya, after all, isn’t a spy herself. The naivety of her desire to reconnect with her father is taped to the fidgety nature of the lens she is seen through. Her world is never at peace, her mind never quite at ease. One harmless dinner with Sam sends Maya on a trip halfway around the world, in search of classified information that could be both her father’s possession or the very thing he’s been trying to steal.

Directed by Neil Burger, Inheritance joins a long list of films that use the phone camera to capture entropy as opposed to choreographing it. Phone cameras have become significantly better over the last decade, but they can still only pull off a certain texture and form. Restless, intimate, hazy. The kind that darts through the skull, but without the intention of sticking. To which effect, Dynevor, her cryptic, at times sullen face, carries the film and anchors it in memory. From loathing daughter, to hustling saviour, to the catharsis of finding herself, this is a film loaded with familial subtext, enveloped in a globetrotting quest that is intentionally dressed down to look like a rushed trip to the departmental store to pick up a bottle of milk. No wonder, we are introduced to Maya while she is shoplifting a liquor bottle at a store.

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Inheritance, though a thriller, evades the tropes of one. It refuses to zoom out. Much like Tom Hardy’s Locke, it’s perfectly happy to draw from the many faces of its suffering protagonist. And much like the iconic Son of Saul, it’s confident that the map of a good story unfolds in the depths of the eyes as opposed to the spaces between people. Unfortunately, Burger is faced with the challenges of form and genre. Thrillers, by design, must address wider stakes. And here, despite a joyless romp around the world, Inheritance doesn’t quite know what to actually say about its espionage-y bits.

That said, for a film that has been made on a shoestring budget and can look like an assemblage of working parts, as opposed to the sum of them, Inheritance is well worth the intrigue and tension that cold family threads come wrapped in. It helps that Dynevor is on-point as this naive daughter who must learn to read the world with considerably more cynicism than she already feels burdened by. It’s possibly an extension of her emphatic turn in the erotic hit Fair Play. It’s like learning to lean on a rock by being hit by one. Inheritance isn’t up there with the chirpiest or most action-packed of low-key, budget-strung films, but it is quietly and emotionally effective as an exploration of distant relationships lived over missed phone calls — now shot on one. 

Inheritance is now streaming on Lionsgate Play. Watch it on OTTplay Premium here.