93 min.
Release Date: June 5, 2020 (Digital & On Demand)
Hell hath no fury like a grieving, angsty teenage girl when white supremacists threaten her life in “Becky,” a blood-soaked, ultra-violent remodeling of the more cartoonishly sadistic “Home Alone” prototype with a touch of junior “Rambo” and “The Equalizer.” 2017’s “Better Watch Out” and 2018’s “Knuckleball” led the way for this subversive innocent-fends-off-baddies premise, but here, directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion (2015’s “Cooties”) and screenwriters Ruckus Skye, Lane Skye and Nick Morris’ film truly embodies a teenage girl’s brewing rage with shockingly gory results. When embracing a pulpier sensibility, “Becky” satisfies as a taut, ruthlessly nasty and entertaining genre effort with the titular teen heroine being a punkish badass who likes gummy worms.
13-year-old Becky Hooper (Lulu Wilson) has entered a rebellious phase since her mother died of cancer. When she and her father, Jeff (Joel McHale), take a ride to their lake house in the country for the weekend, Becky is not too happy to realize Dad’s new girlfriend Kayla (Amanda Brugel) and her little boy Tye (Isaiah Rockliffe) are joining them. Once Jeff unveils the news at dinner that he is ready to re-marry, Becky retreats to her fort in the woods with pet dog Diego. Not long after, a group of escaped convicts, led by swastika-tattooed Dominick (Kevin James, and yes, that Kevin James), show up at the door and hold Jeff, Kayla, and Tye hostage, all for a key Dominick tries locating in the house. Unaware that Becky exists and has that key, the bad men get a little more than they bargain for when they piss off the wrong teenage girl.
Beginning as a home-invasion thriller before shifting into more of a revenge cat-and-mouse feature, “Becky” is straight to the point with jittery tension, airtight pacing, and propulsive style, aided by Nima Fakhrara’s cool, aggressively electronic score. A young but old-soul kind of extraordinary talent, Lulu Wilson (2017’s “Annabelle: Creation”) throws on the glare-ready attitude and pluck, but her performance later exists on an elevated, deeper level as the “strong-willed and vindictive” Becky. Even if a girl in a chipmunk knit beanie would seem to be no match for burly, hardened criminals with guns, Wilson commits to making Becky a resourceful warrior, and we buy it. Though one can’t resist guffawing at how violently the film goes for the jugular—literally—Becky seems to be channeling her primal rage and feral scream from the trauma of losing a parent. Like the flick of a switch, she just snaps and has no problem taking out one of Dominick’s eyeballs, which hangs by its optic nerve before he severs it himself with a kitchen knife.
The plot is so trim that any dangling questions regarding Dominick’s precious key aren’t really worth asking; since we never learn what it actually opens, the key is nothing more than a MacGuffin, an inconsequential means to an end. Dominick’s other goons are easily overwhelmed targets with sketchy motivations, while giant brute Apex (Robert Maillet) at least seems to have grown a conscience after almost a decade in prison. So far removed from the lovable Doug Heffernan on long-running sitcom “The King of Queens,” Kevin James is alarmingly effective and up to the task to play against type as neo-Nazi cult leader Dominick with a controlled menace and swastika ink that’s hard to miss on his skinhead-bald head.
“Becky” could very easily rub viewers the wrong way—and it almost did for yours truly with a sensitivity to animal violence—but it's suggestively savage at times and then goes just ferociously over-the-top without toppling into unearned cruelty. Becky is scrappy and no-holds-barred when it comes to utilizing supplies from her fort, like a jagged ruler and a bouquet of well-sharpened colored pencils. The same goes for setting booby traps on a dock, Becky using a lawnmower without actually cutting the grass, and one of the gnarliest “death by outboard motor” scenes since “Piranha 3-D” (and that death was accidental). “Becky” is still a blunt instrument of an exploitation pic, mind you, albeit one made more alive with the preternaturally versatile Lulu Wilson and an intense, crowd-pleasing catharsis.
Grade: B
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