Windfall is an example of Netflix saying “What pandemic?” Just find a remote, gorgeous house location, 3 good actors, and put them in said house for an hour and a half. It goes down mostly easy, because Netflix at this point has its machine firing on all cylinders. I look forward to Windfall also springing some sort of house hunting reality show where they show off their best purchasable filming locations.
It’s rare, but Windfall is the first movie in a long time where no one has names. Jesse Plemons is “the CEO,” of some tech company. He’s on a little mini vacation with “the wife,” Lily Collins on their remote California vacation home. Unfortunately, they’re not alone when they arrive. A “nobody” played by Jason Segel is also there, unaware they would be arriving. Trapped and desperate, Segel turns into “the robber”, taking the couple hostage and demanding ransom so he can escape safely.
Jason Segel and director Charlie McDowell have collaborated before (the Discovery, which I really did NOT like). But unlike the Discovery, Windfall is meant to be a smaller film, so the story works much better. Also, Jason Segel and Andrew Walker are proven great writers, and had a hand in probably making Windfall’s script a little better. It’s not a bad idea to hire Jesse Plemons and Lily Collins either to work with Segel in the mostly 3 hander. The biggest moments of tension in the movie are because the actors extract the tension with their performances. All 3 of them play seething resentments and rages in different fascinating ways: Plemons’s comes out of hubris, Segel from righteous frustration and indignation, and Collins from societal pressures. Plus the ending isn’t mind blowing but it was surprising, nicely sort of hidden underneath the main forces of the story.
But Charlie McDowell still has a long way to go as a director when it comes to storytelling: Windfall’s winfall, if you will. He directs the actors to be too low key I think. There are tiny blow ups, but in general, those are easy to see coming and don’t drip with tension because of the way McDowell chooses to tell the story. The director certainly has fun wandering the camera around the house. We get disarming humor and lots of shots of people in different rooms; however, the story is better served if the house would get more and more claustrophobic with some really dark humor uneasily ramping up the tension. If you want a great example of a movie like this, a perfect one won best picture a couple years ago, Parasite.
But, Netflix bought Windfall because it can see its audience enjoying its hour and half watch. If you keep your expectations there, Windfall should be a delight to anyone who watches it. And for you Emily in Paris stans, you can easily draw a line from Lily Collins in that being a quasi prequel to her character here. Sadly, the same can be said for Segel and Freaks and Geeks.