"Windfall" a laid-back stage exercise with good fortune coming too late

Windfall (2022)

From the start of its opening credit sequence, “Windfall” bears a classy, laid-back style. It's Hitchcockian both in its retro design and theatrical, forbidding musical score, as the camera holds on a French-doored patio leading to a courtyard until the titles are complete, "Rear Window"-style. That high level of panache persists, even as the film, predominantly a three-hander, does smack of a loose stage exercise to flex the makers' creative muscles during pandemic restrictions. Once one of the characters comes into their own, the true intentions behind director Charlie McDowell (2014’s “The One I Love”) and screenwriters Justin Lader & Andrew Kevin Walker's low-key home-invasion simmerer come through. But even for what “Windfall” does well, it’s too little and too late, overestimating that the film's final turn of the screw will be rewarding enough.

Beginning and staying at a secluded Spanish-style home in Ojai, California (complete with an orange grove), the film lulls us in with a man (Jason Segel), credited only as Nobody, lounging by the pool and drinking glasses of orange juice. We realize the house is not his when he begins wiping the door handles of his fingerprints, and then CEO (Jesse Plemons) and Wife (Lily Collins) arrive early for their getaway. The first thing CEO notices being off is that his assistant didn’t have the flowers he requested for his wife upon their homecoming. Nobody soon ambushes the couple and holds them hostage in their own home (first, he barricades them in the couple’s inactive sauna to give himself a running start before realizing he’s been on camera this whole time). Nobody isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the couple, until CEO gives him the money he thinks he deserves. How is this going to go?

Director Charlie McDowell made his feature debut mainly out of just two actors in a retreat home, so why not use a similar filmmaking approach for a contained thriller? What almost feels like “Funny Games” as a bumbling farce about greed, classism, and a marital façade, “Windfall” diverts more than not as a chatty, lightly amusing power play. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s really in danger (despite the presence of a gun), just withholding information, and yet that’s part of the intrigue and fun. Who Nobody is, what Nobody wants, and why Nobody wants what he wants don’t end up mattering in the long run, and yet we begin wondering why we’re here. The three main actors work well with keeping their dynamic playful and interesting enough. Jesse Plemons is a hoot to watch reveling in the part of a smug billionaire jackass (or is he?), and Jason Segel is playing within that desperate, out-of-his-element slacker mode with a little volatility, even if his Nobody remains exactly that. But it is Lily Collins (the director’s wife) who’s afforded the most depth and sharpest delivery as Wife, ironic given the archetypal nature of such a part. 

As Nobody, CEO, and Wife keep entering different parts of the sprawling property, the mood keeps changing and tantalizing. The “windfall” of the title refers to good fortune to the real person whose story this is meant to tell, and we know not everyone is coming out of Baby's First Hostage Situation. A fourth character, Gardener (Omar Leyva), joins the party to unknowingly bump up the stakes, only to bring about some accidental violence. If there isn’t much plot here, there should be more character, but “Windfall” wants to remain such an enigmatic tease that it doesn’t really budge with much characterization, either. Admirably, it does slowly darken but then comes to a close just as it’s beginning to get more tense and devious. “Windfall” isn’t a total waste as a slight if skillfully played lark, but your own line of questioning may range from, “What’s it all for?” and then ultimately, “That’s it?” More importantly, "When can we move into that house?"

Grade: C +

Netflix is releasing “Windfall” (92 min.) to stream on March 18, 2022.