VILLAINS is a 2019 indie movie I’ve wondered about for a while. It uses the reliable formula “somebody tries to rob a house and discovers a horrific thing going on there.” Other ones that come to mind are THE COLLECTOR, LIVID and DON’T BREATHE. This is a much jokier take on the format than any of those, more of a dark comedy than anything, but I’d say it’s at least horror adjacent. There are maniacs doing something crazy, it takes death seriously, it stars two perhaps underrecognized greats of contemporary horror… yeah, I’ll count it as horror.

It’s about a couple of addled deadbeats named Mickey (Pennywise/Orlok/The Crow himself Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe, THE GUEST, IT FOLLOWS, WATCHER, LONGLEGS) who clumsily rob their last gas station, intending to use the money to move to Florida and start a new life selling seashells. Trouble is they run out of gas on a remote, wooded road. They are not criminal masterminds.

On foot they find a large, isolated house where no one seems to be home. They break in, hoping to steal the car in the garage or come up with some other escape plan. But they face a moral dilemma when they find a young silent girl (Blake Baumgartner, MADELINE’S MADELINE) chained up in the dark basement.

It’s important to understand that Mickey and Jules are absolute dipshits, but kind of sweet. It’s a little RAISING ARIZONA. They pour affection on each other like infatuated teens, she is supportive enough to convince him to sit down in the road and center himself during heist-gone-wrong stress, and also they realize they don’t have it in them to just take off without trying to help this kid. Or at least Jules doesn’t, and Mickey goes along with her because “Okay. Nothing wrong with good karma.”

So when the owners of the house, George (Jeffrey Donovan, J. EDGAR, SICARIO, WRATH OF MAN) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick, GAMER) get home, the intruders pull a gun on them and demand answers. The couple claim it’s no big deal, their “Sweetiepie” is being disciplined for “acting out at school,” and offer money to clear up the “misunderstanding,” which is not enough to convince Mickey. But when they unchain her she bites him on the hand and pretty soon he has a bullet wound in his leg and our protagonists are tied up in the basement with the kid. The little traitor.

Of course there is problem solving, coming up with ways to escape. I like that they’re able to (spoiler) use Jules’ strangely long tongue stud to pick the handcuffs. They develop a tentative relationship with Sweetiepie, who doesn’t seem to be on their side but does point to a laundry chute they can climb through. She’s conflicted, it seems.

You know what this reminded me of? That Paul Walker movie RUNNING SCARED. But only that one section. It’s also kind of like THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS with only one person under the stairs. You have this parody of a family values sitcom couple in a home out of time (Mickey points out the giant wood-paneled tube TV), seeing themselves as Real Americans or some shit even though they’re achieving their American dream via depravity. They have cartoonish southern accents, nice cardigans, speak in flowery old timey phrases, get offended by curse words. George wears an ascot, loves to offer a glass of Scotch and talk about Gloria’s cooking, such as her “speciality” shepherd’s pie. They say grace before dinner even when their guests are duct taped to their chairs.

One novelty of the movie is seeing Sedgwick go to town playing a nut. Gloria is very offended by the break-in because “You can’t just come into our home unannounced and just… run amuck.” Later she handcuffs Mickey to a bed, puts “Just Like the Big Girls Do” by Mallory Sands on her ancient record player and does a strip tease for him, calling herself “Mommy.” But she throws a fit and starts to choke him when she feels that he doesn’t have a boner. Later he has to force one and pretend to be into her to make an escape attempt. It’s a gender flip of a common horror movie degradation (for example, Stretch acting horny for Leatherface in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2).

Donovan is also very game – I recognize him from supporting roles in a bunch of movies and ads for Burn Notice but I didn’t know he had this sort of Walton Goggins side to him.

One reason I got around to this is that I’ve become a real Skarsgård fan in the years since it came out. I love that he’s so good at transforming himself into monsters (as in IT and NOSFERATU) but he’s also happy to play these very human dirtbags with hearts of gold. Tattooed loser junkie dudes who mean well. I would consider his characters in LOCKED and even THE CROW to be cousins to this one. This one is played more for laughs but is similarly sincere.

The MVP here is definitely Monroe. I’ve seen her in so many movies but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her play a funny, high energy character like this, and it turns out she’s as great at that as at her gloomy, distanced heroines. These two characters would be easy to hate but I found them pretty endearing. There’s an innocence to their stupidity. Whenever they come up with a plan they get excited and want to have sex. When they can’t think of a plan Jules says, “I think we need a boost, you know, like a creative boost,” and they snort some coke. And it works.

They’re silly characters played straight, with some funny lines. I like the way she deadpans, “So are you guys gonna kill us, or, uh… what’s the deal?” But there are many layers to the performance. It starts out a joke but goes a little deeper and even finds some effective melodrama by the end. The story turns out to have more weight than I expected at the beginning. I enjoyed the journey.

VILLAINS is written and directed by Dan Berk & Robert Olsen, whose names I didn’t recognize but I had seen their two previous movies, BODY (a Christmas horror thing I quickly forgot) and STAKE LAND II (surprisingly solid made-for-cable sequel). They also did the recent NOVOCAINE and they had one other movie I will now watch and review.

The script for VILLAINS was included on the 2016 Black List alongside FREE GUY, HOTEL ARTEMIS, I TONYA, THE POST, and ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ.

p.s. Really good animated credits too. These two earned having their names written this cool.