Let’s start with the basics: Inheritance was shot completely on an iPhone with a very limited cast and crew. From rudimentary observation, it doesn’t look like streets or common areas were always locked off, nor were a ton of professional extras used. What you see is what you get in Neil Burger’s thrilling spy drama; this method imparts a unique dynamic seldom seen in similar films – an electric, raw energy that flows throughout. It’s a potent mix of guerrilla filmmaking and traditional Hollywood storytelling that uses its small-scale trappings to its advantage.
Using only a handheld camera rig, Inheritance doesn’t feature a single shot set on a tripod or locked down. Don’t worry – you’re not going to get The Blair Witch Project-style shakycam nausea; it all serves to highlight the disquiet and disorder in our main character’s life. After a protracted decline, Maya’s (Phoebe Dynevor) mother has passed away, and her estranged father, Sam (Rhys Ifans), has magically reappeared in time for the funeral. In a dialogue-less prologue, we witness Maya’s chaotic life in short slams as she steals liquor, goes to a club, sexes up some rando, and wakes up in time to go to the memorial service, passing by a room in her apartment where her mother’s empty bed and IV equipment still reside.
Phoebe Dynevor provides a rock-solid foundation for Inheritance with a thorough performance that lets us know what kind of burdens she’s been shouldering almost immediately. She capably emotes the worn-down numbness of Maya’s aimless life; we don’t see anything giving her any kind of stability. It’s almost alien when sister Emily (Ciara Baxendale) catches her in a hug at the service, and it’s even more alien when Sam comes into the funeral parlor, much to their collective disbelief. In this introduction alone, Dynevor starkly defines Maya as a woman riding whatever wave comes her way, which comes into play when Sam asks her to join him on a real estate venture in Egypt.
There’s an obvious standoffishness between the two, seeing how he hasn’t been present for Maya, especially during his wife’s illness and death. But he’s offering Maya a lot of cash and the prospect of more by coming with him to help him sell a property. Right away, we’re put off by his description of what he needs her to do, which is to entertain the client by showing them around the city; he needs someone “young” and “alive,” hesitantly choosing his words carefully to give us the feeling that he’s dancing around the fact that he’s using her to entice the client in other ways. Nonetheless, she agrees simply because, as she says to Emily, she needs to get away from the city and out of her own life.
Inheritance turns sharply after their first dinner is interrupted by Sam being kidnapped while local police converge on the restaurant, and the rest of the plot unfolds: Sam’s in the intelligence game, not real estate, and he’s brought Maya along to help him on his latest assignment. We’re brought into this strictly from Maya’s point of view, made to experience these unraveling occurrences as she does; each phone call, kidnapper’s instruction, and movement feels uncharted, often coming without warning or preview. Sam’s captors want her to retrieve a certain item and bring it to them on the scantest of reassurances that he’s alive and unharmed.
What’s even better is that the paranoia is upped due to random passersby looking straight at the camera and watching the crew shooting while Maya walks or runs along. It’s an unexpectedly nice touch that Burger, cinematographer Jackson Hunt, and editor Nick Carew have chosen to leave in; from the camera’s point of view, these people are perceived as visually following Maya, thus creating more of an encroaching, net-tightening feel. There’s a scene involving an escape from a train that had random people expressing alarm at her method, which further immerses the viewer into Maya’s quest for the truth.
Burger and Olen Steinhauer’s script is spare (in a good way), giving us only what we need to know and relying on inference and expression for the rest. It also gives space for Maya to slow down and think, and there’s an exciting motorcycle chase through Delhi as well. (Indian actor Amit Rajindar Grover, who plays the motorcycle taxi driver, is fantastic in this sequence.) There’s no real James Bond-type plot exposition, and we never know who’s working with or against whom. We don’t know if we can trust Erika (Necar Zadegan), a woman seen leading an assault squad into the Egyptian restaurant in the film’s first act. Likewise, we don’t even know if we can trust Sam himself; he’s lied to Maya and his family about everything so far – who or what says he’s being honest now? Pushing us further into the hole is that nothing happens outside of Maya’s immediate view – this story is told entirely from her perspective – and everyone she meets could possibly be the enemy, even Sam’s trusted friend Khalil (Majd Eid).
Throughout, Phoebe Dynevor puts us through Maya’s bewilderment and fear with gifted aplomb on Maya’s way to the truth and the end of her personal journey, putting the specters of her broken family to rest. Neil Burger has an explosive little package in Inheritance, a film that enjoys being in that whirlwind space where the audience discovers bits and pieces of the whole along with our fish-out-of-water protagonist. It’s kind of a minimum-budget Mission: Impossible movie in which big emotional stakes take precedence over national security threats. Chock full of strong performances, captivating locations, and a galloping pace (but not so fast that you’ll feel left behind), Inheritance is a thrilling early-year surprise, a massively entertaining and hardy spy caper.
