Windfall Review: Netflix Thriller is a Thin Exercise in Hitchcockian Style

LA Noire: To his credit, McDowell remains a stylish director, making great use of the house in which our (most of the time) three performers act out their respective mind games. DP Isiah Donté Lee makes ominous use of the hot California sun, beating down on our stressed-out triumvirate as they chase each other around orange trees, get stuffed into elegant home saunas, or bicker against the natural light in the living room.

It still looks like the crisp, digitally-refined Netflix movie it is, but McDowell’s slow pans around the space and the brassy credits font evoke Cassavetes movies from the ’70s and the noir movies of the ’40s, respectively.

But the problems lie in Walker and Lader’s script, which just doesn’t have enough meat on the bones to adequately fill out Windfall‘s 90-minute runtime. It’s a darkly funny idea, at least at first: What happens when a bumbling robber with an axe to grind encounters a wealthy couple who’d love nothing more to cooperate?

Segel’s intruder is reluctant to get aggressive, but also not eager to let his charges go, and Plemons and Collins do their best to kill with kindness. When they ask him how much money he wants, he settles on $150,000. Plemons, a literal billionaire, winces; Collins shrugs. “Yeah, you’re gonna want to get more than that.”

These bits of negotiation are fun, and come closest to carving out an interesting dynamic between our characters. But just as we never learn the names of any of the three people we’re watching for ninety minutes, we learn so little about them that everyone’s motivations become difficult to track.

We never truly learn what Segel’s deal is, apart from a mild implication that he may have personal beef with the app that made Plemons rich (one that helps companies downsize employees). Same with Collins, whom it’s implied was someone else’s secretary before falling into a loving but controlling relationship with Plemons.

Plemons makes the most with the script’s broad sketch of his character, a passive-aggressive Silicon Valley douche who wears the veneer of reasonableness to mask his utter contempt for anyone who isn’t him. Even though Segel has the gun, Plemons carries himself as if he’s the one in control of the situation, trying to bluster and trick his way to freedom.

The Three Amigos: But as the film goes on, and the plot settles into something of a kidnapping sleepover (Plemons’ assistant can’t get them the ransom until tomorrow afternoon), Windfall starts to run out of steam and glance desperately around for other things to do.

Once the perversely funny image of a kidnapper and his hostages watching The Three Amigos on an ornate projector screen wears off, the actors start to run around in circles having to engage in the same circular arguments about demands and tactics and the logistics of the kidnapping itself.

Then blood starts to flow, more out of contrivance than genuine progression, and the film sprints towards an unpredictable end seemingly out of obligation. The actors are still eating up the material, but after a while, it just kinda feels like they’re saying and doing nothing, albeit with conviction.

The Verdict: Windfall has all the ingredients for an unusual crackerjack thriller: a game trio of actors putting in solid work (and, in Segel’s case, tapping into previously unseen layers of menace), some stylish direction, and a cheeky noir aesthetic from the credits to Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’ brass-heavy score.

But the whole thing never quite builds on its mercurial concept the way it ought to; the characters are meant to be mysterious, but instead come across as mere ciphers. There are some limp grasps here at the sociopathy of wealth, and the ways that the ultra-rich don’t see people besides them as truly human, but it’s all thrown away for some cheap twists at the end that barely justify themselves.

End of the day, Windfall feels exactly like what it is: A COVID-era experiment to fill time during quarantine for a filmmaker and cast eager to work. It’s a cute experiment, and I’m sure they had fun, but the final product leaves a lot to be desired.

Where’s It Playing? Windfall breaks into your house then stays there long after it’s okay to leave on March 18th, only on Netflix.

Trailer: