Becky - A review

Ruthless Neo-Nazi’s escape from prison and end up holding a family hostage whilst looking for a MacGuffin. But, too bad, those silly Nazi’s hadn’t thought about the relentlessly vindictive daughter of the household: Becky.

Becky is one of those movies in which style and set-pieces trump narrative. So visually the Becky character is well developed in a bumblebee-sweeter and a brightly orange chipmunk hat. It’s an pleasantly weird, fantasy nay, superhero look that are somewhat rather popular with movies dealing with brave teenaged girls (I’d bet Becky and Barbara from I kill Giants (2017) could be the best of friends). The same goes for the villain of the piece as (cast against type) Kevin James playing a patriarch Nazi. He already has a rather distinctive look with his bald head, tattoos and bright orange jersey and even gets to look even more bad-ass as the movie progresses.

All this could pretty much be expected from the opening title alone. Its brightly coloured, flashing of the name Becky promises some sort of superhero named Becky and in this visual sense the audience is rewarded.

Unfortunately the story of the movie isn’t even close to that of a superhero. There is no arch for Becky, and the MacGuffin stays a MacGuffin (probably to keep an opening for a sequel). Basically all you need to know about Becky is said halfway through; if she’s nice she’s adorable, but if she’s mad...

And that’s about all the arch the viewer gets for her whilst the movie goes out of its way to show one elaborate death scene after another – and none of them are very logical.

It’s a shame really because the killer-kids-home-alone-inversion had already been done before so marvellously impressively in The Aggression Scale (2012).

Also a movie that started with seven or so producers logos.

Usually this is a bad sign (especially if you don’t recognize any of them) but not for The Aggression Scale.

In this particular case it allowed the movie to be its own movie and up the violence and the bloodshed to insane levels.

In that movie too there was no arch for the main ‘killer-kid’ (the kid being a sociopath and all) but there was for almost every other character on screen (especially the sister).

And every elaborate kill -even if they were at times slightly too creative- never went overboard with ‘insane’ ways to kill a person.

I would be lying if Becky doesn’t try to, at least, put some kind of character arch into the movie but the way it is handled, it just doesn’t work -I'm talking about the (most impressive) side-character here.

When I saw where this particular arch was going I realized that Becky is filled to the brim with ‘against type’ casting.

And, maybe, too much isn’t always a good thing.

It’s clear that Becky tries to breath the same air as The Aggression Scale and when it comes to brutality it brings it. It’s just that Becky puts too much fate on the visuals instead of the narrative. Which is especially strange since the cast of the movie is so strong. Kevin James is a very capable actor who knows his craft. Lulu Wilson has, pretty much, grown up playing in the darker stories of movies and then there’s even the giant Robert Maillet who has got villainy-roles down to a key.

One additional nitpick though, Kevin James isn't a very tall man. So when his character has to intimidate ‘the giant’ it relies heavily on charisma and screen-presence. James has that, mind you, but not enough for me to buy this particular scene. Truth be told the script got in the way a bit as well. But the idea behind it is sound and its execution the best it could be.

In the end –as those punky credits roll which will always remind me of All the boys love Mandy Lane (2006), since I saw it there first- Becky is close to being the unofficial sequel to The aggression scale but never quite gets there. The focus is too much on visually making Becky a superhero that the movie forgets to tell an actual interesting story.

So let’s just call Becky an origins story; but in the sequel there’d better be more that just visual flair as the movie hops from one unbelievably, overtly elaborate deathscene to the next.