Door in the Ground: "Inheritance" hooks and then gets too outlandish for its own good

Inheritance (2020)

111 min.

Release Date: May 22, 2020 (Digital & On Demand)

Any film that somewhat recalls Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 Best Picture-winning masterpiece “Parasite” better bring it. “Inheritance” does not even come close, but taken on its own terms, it’s a slick, overheated morality thriller revolving around an upper-class family and the secrets they keep and take to the grave. Director Vaughn Stein (2018’s “Terminal”) and first-time writer Matthew Kennedy have an intriguing hook for a mystery potboiler and hold one’s attention for quite a while, until things get too outlandish for their own good.

Following the heart attack of not-so-saintly patriarch Archer Monroe (Patrick Warburton), his family dynasty gathers for the reading of the will at the country manor. His son William (Chace Crawford), a congressman in a race for re-election, receives $20 million, while daughter Lauren (Lily Collins), a high-priced Manhattan district attorney, only gets $1 million. Though even mother Catherine (Connie Nielsen) seems appalled that her daughter got the shaft, Lauren is taken aside by the family lawyer and privately handed an envelope with a key and thumb drive left to her by Daddy. As Lauren comes to discover, her father holds on to a giant secret even posthumously and burdens her with a responsibility: a man named Morgan Warner (Simon Pegg) has been held captive for 30 years in an underground bunker in the woodsy backyard of the family estate. Unkempt and shackled, Morgan wants his story to be heard by Lauren, but can he even be trusted? Testing her ethical practice, Lauren will have to decide if keeping Morgan buried—and protecting her family—or letting him go—and potentially corroding her Monroe name—will be the right thing to do.

“Inheritance” opens efficiently in a frenzied sequence to give a sense of Lauren’s severe discipline, slick professionalism and bottled-up emotion, while intercutting to Archer grabbing his chest and dying behind the wheel. When she’s not running hard through Central Park (presumably after her father’s death), Lauren is a ball-buster in court, then helping with her brother’s congressional campaign, and then answering questions during a press conference until a reporter informs her of the tragic news. Lily Collins does convincingly essay a privileged young woman pressured to be the best as Lauren Monroe. Lauren does have a husband (Marque Richardson) and daughter, whose recital gets to be missed by Mom while she’s taking care of Grandpa’s buried secret, but they become afterthoughts once the plot has no reason for them anymore. Connie Nielsen doesn’t get much to do, either, as the widowed Mrs. Monroe, until the big climax, and even then, she’s chained up for most of it. 

In a stroke of offbeat casting, an unshaven, long-haired Simon Pegg is playing against type as a man robbed of everything he had and forced into a life of isolation with his one wish being a slice of key lime pie. Pegg gets to play Morgan Warner as an unreliable presence to the viewer and Lauren, for a bit, until—and this isn’t spoiling anything, considering Pegg has been cast—he eventually gets to be deliciously evil and dig into this role as if it were five-course meal.

The moral quandary Lauren is faced with—and maybe a couple of the doozy plot twists—should be enough for “Inheritance” to remain compulsively watchable. By the time other sins of the father and shady dealings are revealed, the film begins to lose quite a bit of the tension it once had. And then, just as director Vaughn Stein pretends to be wrapping everything up in too-easy fashion, the final 20 minutes open up a door in the floor with one preposterous plot revelation too many and then a routine and rather laborious confrontation. In the case of “Inheritance,” less might have been more. 

Grade: C +