The Rental is a 2020 horror/thriller movie directed by Dave Franco and starring Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White and Toby Huss.
The movie begins with two couples- Michelle(Brie) and Charlie(Stevens) and Josh(White) and Mina(Vand). They have rented a house for the weekend. They drive up there and they meet the landlord's brother, Taylor(Huss). Taylor seems a little odd. They think he is racist or something. Taylor drops off a telescope. Mina has a problem with him and she doesn't like him. They all have a party and Michelle goes to bed and Josh passes out while Mina and Charlie have sex in the shower. Someone is watching them cheat on their partners. Mina discovers a hidden camera in the shower. She realises that someone saw what they did. Charlie says that they can't call the cops or Josh and Michelle will find out what they have done. They can't find their dog. Josh thinks that Taylor did something to it. Taylor arrives to fix the hot tub. Josh accuses him of taking the dog. Mina tells him that she knows what is doing. He doesn't know what they are talking about. He wants to call the police. Mina tries to stop him. Josh beats him up and knocks him out. Someone is filming this. That person finishes Taylor off.
The group find Taylor dead. They decide what to do. They search the place for cameras. They take the body away. Michelle hears the shower turning off and on. Josh pushes Taylor's body into the sea. Michelle sees the video of Mina and Charlie in the shower. They are being filmed by the unknown killer. Michelle is angry and hurt and she decides to leave. She confronts Charlie and then she drives off. She ends up hitting a tree and she finds a trap that has burst her tyres. Someone comes. Charlie looks for her and he sees a message that she has sent. He finds her dead. He gets hit by someone. Josh tries to break down a locked door in the house. He finds a secret room with cameras and stuff. He gets a text from Charlie's phone with footage of Charlie and Mina talking about what they did. Then he sees the video of them in the shower. He gets attacked by the killer, who has also killed Charlie. Josh dies. The killer chases Mina and she falls off a cliff. The movie ends with the man clearing up all of his stuff from the house. He removes his cameras. The dog comes back to the house showing that it was fine all along. The killer sets up his cameras in another house, suggesting that the killings will start again. He spies on a couple and attacks them while they are asleep.
This film was not very good. I don't know what Franco was trying to do here. It is not a horror movie really. It is more of a thriller with drama thrown in. I found that there were little to no scares and that the movie wasn't very interesting overall. I didn't care for the cast very much and I didn't really care if they died or not. The Mina character was annoying and I was glad when she fell off the cliff. Whatever this movie was trying to do, I think that it failed. It was all over the place and it should have stayed either a drama or a thriller. I found some of it tedious and when something did happen, I just didn't care anymore. If you like thrillers with some drama , then this might be for you. I didn't like it. It wasn't for me. There just wasn't enough in it to keep me interested. The cast weren't particularly great either, in my opinion. This gets a 3/10.
