Inheritance Parent Guide

Archer Monroe (Patrick Warburton) has amassed a great deal of both wealth and power. His daughter Lauren (Lily Collins) is the Manhattan District Attorney, and his son William (Chase Crawford) is running for re-election as a congressman. However, his unexpected death sends the family reeling – not least when he leaves Lily a strange key and a cryptic note in his will. Following the clues, Lily finds a bunker hidden on the property, and within a somewhat emaciated man. Identifying himself as Morgan Warner (Simon Pegg), he begs Lily to free him, claiming that Archer had kept him imprisoned for the better part of 30 years. Lily, uncertain about her family to begin with, now finds her world collapsing around her as Morgan digs up more and more secrets about the life she thought she had. But surely, she thinks, her father wouldn’t have kept this man buried in the yard for no reason…right?

Thrillers as a genre have reached a difficult point. With so many of them on the market, it’s getting more difficult to genuinely surprise anyone. Tragically, this one largely fails at the task. Now, that’s not to say that the movie doesn’t go through all the right motions – there’s a great deal of uncertainty, some ripe family drama, and colossal potential consequences. But by the third act, the only person who doesn’t see where this is going is the protagonist. I won’t claim to have guessed the specific details of the “big reveal”, but I had a pretty good idea.

If you’re new to the genre (or just not paying that much attention, which is a wonderful way to watch many movies), you’ll still have some fun. Simon Pegg is clearly having a wonderful time away from his usual roles as a squeaky clean nice-guy, and it shows in every scene he’s in. I just wish we got to see more of Patrick Warburton as the aggressive family patriarch, if only for his distinctive voice.

Despite the story’s focus on family, the film is completely unsuitable for family viewing. Frequent profanity and a disturbing depiction of a sexual assault, along with occasional graphic violence push it into Restricted territory. Moreover, the movie seems to have a fairly loosey-goosey approach to ethics, and even characters “doing the right thing” are frequently playing fast and loose with basic morality. For all that, though, it isn’t an uninteresting portrait of how the other half lives – and the lengths to which they’ll go to keep living that way.