Becky
by Jonathan Milott, Cary Murnion
Stepping into his very first villain role, Kevin James (as neo-nazi Dominick) goes head to head with the titular character, an angry adolescent who hates everything except her dogs, in the recent release Becky. For unknown reasons, Dominick and his merry band of escaped prisoners head up into the mountains in search of a mysterious key that just so happens to be hidden in the basement of Becky's family cabin. In true horror movie fashion, Becky, her dad and his girlfriend, along with her son, all happen to be at the cabin on this fateful day. Let the games begin.
Becky quickly takes off after a few small introductions with minimal backstory. While there's plenty of action, gore, and violence, the film unfortunately lacks any lore and at no point makes Becky a very likeable character to root for. Now, don't get me wrong, I would literally root for a piece of used toilet paper from Hell over a nazi, but I just didn't care about any of the characters in this film. The closest I came to caring were for the dogs.
It was a simple formula of good vs bad with a rip off of Tiny Tina from the Borderlands franchise as the main character. Kevin James was decent in his portrayal of a dirtbag racist and Amanda Brugel was strong as the protective mother figure. I've seen a lot of back and forth online about how this is basically a Home Alone for the horror genre and I can definitely see that. While the movie does lack quit a bite, the kill scenes are nothing short of great, the gore and effects being the best parts of the film. The most infuriating thing, though, would be the ending. I won't give anything away; you'll just have to watch and get irritated about it for yourself.
Coming in at only 90 minutes, there are worse things you can spend your time on than Becky, but there are also better.
Stevie Kopas, HMS