Inheritance

Directed and Written by Tyler Savage
Starring Chase Joliet, Sara Montez, Dale Dickey,
​Drew Powell and Tim Abell

Watch this trailer! It’s really darn good.
​
Then, go find something else to do like laundry, dishes, mow the lawn or have a root canal. All activities listed above would be infinitely more satisfying than watching an hour and thirty minutes of Inheritance.

The premise is intriguing: Ryan, a run of the mill construction worker, is called off a job site by an estate planner who alerts him about his birth-father’s death. Apparently he just inherited his dad’s luxurious $2 million home overlooking the ocean in Herald Point. And then…as always…madness ensues.

Similar to The Shining, once on property, it seems something overtakes the tedious life of the male lead and drives him into deliberate insanity. UNLIKE The Shining though, Inheritance is one monotonous lackluster of a film. It doesn’t come close to comparison of Kubrick’s masterpiece.

Ryan (Joliet) brings his pregnant fiancé, Isi (Sara Montez) to visit the gated house as they explore the property and decide whether to keep or sell the house, in order to plan for their future. Little details start to unfold. Painfully slowly. Nothing catastrophic occurs to a climactic point of reckoning that will satisfy the hopeful viewer. Well, maybe one small incident. But hardly earth-shattering for an intended horror film.

A social call from Ryan’s extroverted sister and her husband is a bright moment! While the brooding and bland new house owner welcomes his family to dinner in the home, a sibling rivalry comes to fruition and words begin to pierce each other over the meal. It’s a highlight of an otherwise dismal feature. But alas, it is a short lived moment and then it’s back to watching strange apparitions waking him up, hallucinations of the dead father in his surf gear just glimpsing at Ryan, and one quirky encounter with the bohemian next door neighbor.

A cousin’s sudden appearance digging up dirt in the yard gave some promise to a bitter battle between fists, but once again…tragic disappoint develops as the unsettling and tiresome film continues to drag.

This is a psychological thriller without the thrill. Or the psychology. Or the suspense. So, it becomes a time suckage in the world of “No new tale to tell.”

If a copy of Inheritance sat on my shelf, my last will and testament would say “burn this”.

Check out the trailer HERE