Hallowatch 2026 No. 6: The Rental (2020)
Wow that Dave Franco sure knows how to write contention between brothers, huh?
Here's the wikipedia link for a synopsis.
Basically everyone in this movie was One of My Guys - Dan Stevens for Cuckoo and Legion, Alison Brie for GLOW, Jeremy Allen White for Fremont, and Toby Huss for Halt and Catch Fire. Going in blind, I knew this was a Dave Franco directed picture but every one of those, I popped and excitedly pointed at the screen to a reaction of minor annoyance from my cats.
The plot was fascinating — a domestic drama gets invaded by a slasher film absolutely rips as a premise; you could do basically whatever you want for the first half. Franco plays it fairly safe with the drugs-and-infidelity drama, but basically anything can slot in there and then be concluded with
I do think it's interesting that this is the third movie I've seen in the past month about Airbnb anxiety (with Bone Lake and Barbarian). I guess it's a fairly easy premise to repurpose for impersonation, home invasion, being on the receiving end of a voyeur, all manner of domestic horror.
Performance-wise, Alison Brie I was slightly let down by until her character took drugs and pretended to motorboat Toby Huss's buttcrack. Incredible gag. I wish they would've spent a little more time establishing her. Jeremy Allen White, pre-The Bear, was also very interesting; I doubt he'd have played this the same nowadays. Dan Stevens is wasted in this. Not in the fun way. And Toby Huss is brilliant with what they give him but it's not much. The characters are all written very large/broad, which could be interesting if there was a heavier hand directing, but alas.
Not bad, not a bad way to spend 88 minutes. I would not be disappointed if this ended up being more of a franchise, which I guess memetically, it sort of has, but you aren't missing much by skipping this.
