THE OWNERS (2020)

| Thriller, Horror |

Director: Julius Berg

Writers: Mathieu Gompel, Julius Berg, Geoff Cox

Cast: Maisie Williams, Sylvester McCoy, Rita Tushingham

Release Date (Theaters): Sep 4, 2020  Limited

Release Date (Streaming): Sep 4, 2020

Runtime: 1h 32m

SYNOPSIS:

A group of friends think they find an easy score at an empty house with a safe full of cash. But when the owners, an elderly couple, come home early, the tables are suddenly turned.

PLOT:

A retired couple finds their isolated house besieged by a gang of young criminals. The thieves think it will be easy to make them give up the secret of their safe. But they have no idea the nightmare they’ve gotten into and soon need to fight to escape the house alive.

SUMMARY:

Three British teens decide to burgle the countryside home of an apparently rich doctor and his wife based on knowledge that the house contains a safe filled with cash. The young miscreants represent a typically cinematic assortment of disparate personalities: Gaz (Jake Curran), the leader, is hyper-aggressive, bordering on psychopathic; Nathan (Ian Kerry) has some redeeming traits but is eager to go along because of financial desperation; and Terry (Andrew Ellis) is weak-willed and childlike. While the trio are staking out the house waiting for the couple to leave, Nathan’s girlfriend Mary (Williams) shows up, and despite her misgivings she winds up taking part in the burglary.

When the boys are unable to open the safe, they decide to wait for the house’s occupants to return so they can force them to give up the combination. Dr. Huggins (McCoy) and his wife Ellen (Tushingham) soon show up, and the proceedings take a decidedly strange turn. At first, the couple seem harmless, with the bowtie-wearing Huggins acting meek and courtly and his wife clearly suffering from some form of dementia. But the oldsters eventually show very different colors, and the resulting cat-and-mouse game between the robbers and their would-be victims turns graphically violent.