Inheritance shoots its generic thriller through the invigorating lens of an iPhone
Phoebe Dynevor and Rhys Ifans supply the family drama to the skewed take on a globe-trotting adventure.
Photo: IFC Films
Neil Burger’s shot-on-an-iPhone globe-trotting thriller Inheritance begins on a New York City street. Guerrilla-style close-ups frame the face of despondent twenty-something Maya Welch (Phoebe Dynevor). EDM blares on the soundtrack. We follow Maya, elliptically, on a night of reckless behavior: shoplifting, clubbing, sex. Finally, she returns to an apartment where a large medical bed sits empty. She lights a cigarette with a candle from a Buddhist altar in the living room and climbs out the window to contemplate the street below.
As we’ll soon learn, Maya has spent the last nine months taking care of her terminally ill mother. She has passed from grief to the “What now?” stage. An answer appears by way of her long-absent dad, Sam (Rhys Ifans, doing a softened Trump voice), whose presence at the memorial service is treated as an unwelcome surprise. He’s some kind of wealthy businessman, currently working in international real estate. He offers her an easy job escorting potential buyers from Egypt—a chance to make money and get her mind off her mother’s death, and maybe an opportunity for him to make some amends. “Let me be a father,” he says.