I’m finally back with more Spooktober. Yes, I know this is really late. The last one was early. This one is late. It’s 2020. There are no rules anymore.
Anyway, this time I’m reviewing the film The Owners, which is a new horror/thriller film starring Maisie Williams, and since that’s this movie’s only claim to fame, she’s front and center in all of the posters. To be fair, she is a main character in this story, so it’s not totally off base. But when a movie advertises its star this much rather than its plot… you do have to wonder.
And wonder I did. And then I watched it.
The Owners is a story about some rag-tag young people who hear about these old people who have a safe in their basement with a lot of money in it maybe. The summary of the movie says that elderly owners of the house come home “early.” But that’s not really true. What really happens is that they can’t break into the safe, so they have to wait for the old people to come home to help them get into the safe.
But things don’t go as planned, and the old people aren’t giving up their safe code without a fight.
I feel like this is about to be a short review because there’s not much to say about this one. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that there’s a twist in which the old people who are being threatened become the scary threatening ones. But there are other twists after that that get more and more ridiculous.
Oh look! There are other people in this movie.
I don’t want to give away any of the final twist, but trust me when I say they’re underwhelming. I guess it was a frightening concept, in theory. But in execution, it all happens so fast towards the end that I barely remember it happening. The pacing in this movie was all over the place. We spend such a long time waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it finally does, it’s just so much so fast.
On top of that, friends, this isn’t available for free anywhere. I had to pay to rent this. This is probably one that you’ll appreciate more if you’re not sitting there thinking about the $5 you wasted on it. But I wouldn’t know. Because I did waste $5 on it.
As for Maisie Williams, I really hope her future film endeavors go better for her. She wasn’t bad in this movie, but I think part of the problem is that none of these characters are the least bit likable or sympathetic. It was all very frustrating.
So yeah… that’s my exasperated review of this movie. You can see why I put it off. Here’s hoping for better Spooktobers in future weeks. We’ll see what happens on Saturday. I hear there’s going to be another Spooktober post.