Inheritance (2020)

Plot of Inheritance: After a rich and influential man dies, his eldest offspring, Lauren, is left a video and a key. Lauren is an assistant DA, with a family of her own, although she seems to spend a lot of time at the family mansion. The key is to an underground bunker out in the woods of the palatial family home, and when she investigates she finds a man chained up in a dark room, containing the rudimentary means of survival.  At first she runs away but gradually gets into conversation with him, allows him to shave and brings him food. He tells her that his name is Morgan Warner and that he had been her father’s business partner, but that when they had been driving home from a night out they had run down and killed a pedestrian. In order to protect his political future Lauren’s father was prepared to sacrifice his partner, but instead imprisoned him in the bunker. So Morgan says, but is he telling the truth, and what is Lauren going to do anyway.

Content: No sex or nudity, although in one flashback it is implied that a rape takes place. There is smoking and drinking mostly in the bunker. Lauren is seen being a DA, confronting the press and at one point appearing in court. She and the rest of her family attend the burying of her father’s coffin. We have seen him die at the wheel of his car apparently from a heart attack. Lauren also interacts once with her husband and child. But mostly she in in the family mansion with her mother and also underground in the bunker with the imprisoned man with whom she argues quite a bit. They do go out and check on the body of the pedestrian which seems to prove something. She takes Morgan’s finger prints but has not got the results for most of the time.

A View: I had to look up Lily Collins to see how old she is. Thirty-one at the time of this film, so in theory she could be all the things that the drama requires her to be, but she seems so insubstantial, and it is surely intentional that she be so hopeless as the wielder of a handgun, but Morgan does not take advantage of it. It looks as if certain parts of this film were made up as they went along, with conspicuous lack of success, or some bits were reshot to try to make the ending fit. It was hopeless so do not give it your time even for nothing.

Fun Fact: You may feel sorry for Simon Pegg, who spent months preparing for the role of the man in the bunker.