Inheritance, 2025.
Directed by Neil Burger.
Starring Phoebe Dynevor, Rhys Ifans, Ciara Baxendale, Kersti Bryan, Byron Clohessy, Salim Siddiqui, and Majd Eid.
SYNOPSIS:
When Maya learns her father Sam was once a spy, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an international conspiracy.
Co-writer/director Neil Burger’s Inheritance initially shows promise as a familial drama about grief and reconnection with an element of trust and distrust, which makes it all the more disappointing when the thriller aspect doesn’t merely takeover but collapses the film into both predictable and unpredictable stupidity. That’s also not to say this premise couldn’t have worked disguised as a thriller, but for one, it’s not particularly thrilling unless one’s idea of tension comes from watching a protagonist slowly walk from point A to point B several times, and that by the end there are no traces of anything grounded or human. It concludes with a twist ending that makes remarkably little sense and isn’t convincing in terms of plot and character while absurdly far-fetched.
Phoebe Dynevor’s Maya has been taking care of her ill mother for roughly the past year. As the film begins, she has just passed. However, Maya isn’t filled with sadness but something closer to relief; she goes out for a night on the town, gets wasted, and hooks up with a guy while making it clear in bed that it’s solely for her pleasure. At the funeral, Maya still doesn’t have much sadness to show, reconnecting with her sister Emily (Ciara Baxendale playing an entirely pointless character) and estranged father Sam (Rhys Ifans.) She is also approached to come to work alongside him, now a wealthy international businessman, claiming that he wants to repay her for all the missing time while also suggesting that she would be good at the job he has for her, which consists of driving around clients and tending to their needs until it’s time to broker a deal.
Maya accepts the offer for complicated reasons that feel human; Phoebe Dynevor is solid here, and there are worthwhile character moments as daughter and father reminisce and try to rebuild a relationship over lost time. Throughout those interactions, there are also several clues that Sam isn’t being completely honest with Maya about his job or what they are doing in Cairo, which works until it doesn’t. Eventually, the two are separated with Maya under orders to locate a package and bring it to India in a matter of life and death for her father.
The problem is that director Neil Burger (co-writing alongside Olen Steinhauer) seems to believe that watching Maya go on a series of travelogue walking missions builds suspense. Considering that there is an obvious reveal around the corner (one that’s just too clichéd and goofy to take seriously), that falls flat. The one exception is a chase through New Delhi with Maya convincing a taxi bike driver that the pursuers include a dangerous ex-boyfriend. It’s a sequence that takes advantage of streets cluttered with vehicles, meaning that it’s a uniquely slow but tense hot pursuit.
Even when Inheritance descends into nonsense, it is watchable, and one remains invested, although it overestimates how interesting the package and conspiracy elements are. For a film that starts in New York and goes from Cairo to New Delhi to Seoul, it’s also somehow visually forgettable. Its final moments have a trashy airport paperback novel vibe, which doesn’t work since the film is also trying to be grounded and tackle more complex family dynamics involving loss and abandonment through a juxtaposition of pushing closer to an estranged parent, hoping things will turn out differently as a naïve coping mechanism for grieving the good parent who fell ill and became a burden. That’s a solid foundation for family drama that these filmmakers fail at weaving in a similarly grounded and believable thriller.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
