Review: Villains

Mickey and Jules (Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe) just pulled one last job. Specifically, they robbed a gas station, which isn’t too terribly exciting… and they did also immediately run out of gas, which is maybe a little awkward, but hey that’s alright because they found a house to break into and… yeah, that house is home to delightfully domesticated serial killer couple George and Gloria (Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick). Today is not Mickey and Jules’ best, and its only going to get worse.

Played with an intense mix of quirk and sexual energy, Skarsgård and Monroe make for inherently likable criminals. While the tagline “Two bad people are about to meet two worse people” insinuates a bit more villainy on their part, there is little doubt that these two can cause some trouble. They’re also the kind of ne’er-do-wells who are easy to root for when the tables inevitably turn and they become the victims of equally charismatic psychopaths.

Speaking of which, Donovan and Sedgwick perfectly match our foul-mouthed heroes in their portrayal of America’s most conservative murderers. Donovan gets a little more to work with overall, but when Sedgwick shines, she does so with all the scenery-chewing hunger of her on-screen husband.

Plot-wise, Villains is really nothing to write home about. It’s a simple, well-worn premise that you could tie to anything from The People Under the Stairs to 2018’s Monster Party. Breaking into the home of middle-to-upper class white people is generally a bad idea in movies, and usually that bad idea results in lots of bloodshed. Luckily, it also tends to result in one hell of a fun movie, and Villains is no exception. It’s more structurally slight than those films, but the sweet central relationship and warm, carefully composed cinematography make up for that.

If for some reason you’re not satiated with those elements, there might not be too much for you here. It’s funny, but rarely uproariously so, and while there is some violent bloodshed, it never reaches a high enough body count to rival its suburban horror brethren. Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen have a firm grasp on the technical and character aspects of this little production, but they also seem content with delivering little more than another quirky horror comedy. That’s by no means a negative, but it does feel as though the premise could have been milked for far more entertainment value.