Film / Becky

"Becky, you're clearly a special girl!"

Becky is a 2020 action-horror film directed by Jonathan Millot and Cary Murnon, starring Lulu Wilson, Kevin James, and Joel McHale.

Things haven't been the same for young teenager Becky (Wilson) ever since her mother died. Her mood has turned sullen, she's grown prone to great bouts of anger, and her father, Jeff (McHale), has gotten a new lover, leaving Becky a bitter, troublemaking youth. It only gets more frustrating for Becky when Jeff takes her on a trip to their lake house, reveals that he's marrying his girlfriend, Kayla, and has invited her and her son Ty to the lake house with them for the weekend, sending Becky stomping off into the forest in a rage.

Things somehow get even worse when a ruthless gang of escaped convicts, lead by the Neo-Nazi Dominick (James), show up at the lake house in search of a mysterious key. With Jeff, Kayla and Ty taken as hostages, Becky begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Dominick, quickly utilizing the situation as an outlet for her anger and bringing into question who is the predator and who is the prey.

A sequel titled Becky 2: The Wrath of Becky was released March 26, 2023.

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Becky provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Becky wages war with four murderous escaped prisoners and wins.
• Anti-Hero: Becky is facing off with sociopathic criminals no doubt, but her inner rage and coldly cruel personality makes her far from pure. She even seems positively smug about her brutal victory over the villains by the end.
• The Atoner: Apex hates that he killed kids under orders by Dominick, and spares Becky as a result.
• Badass Boast: Becky gives one to her enemies when she starts picking them off, quoting a poem:
  "There once was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid."
  • Later on gives another to Dominick, face to face:
    Dominick: I don't wanna have to hurt you.
    Becky: But I do wanna hurt you, real bad.
• Big Bad: Dominick leads the home invasion of the lake house.
• Black Comedy: Some of the violence reaches such absurd, ridiculous levels that it goes into hilarity.
• Boom, Headshot!: Becky shoots Apex in the head from close range near the end.
• The Brute: Apex is very tall and muscular and strong enough to break smartphones in half with his bare hands.
• Canine Companion: Though Becky has two dogs—Dora and Diego—it is Diego who follows her around and works with her throughout the movie.
• Car Fu: After luring Dominick out to the van with Diego in it, Becky rams him with her father's car.
• Censored Child Death: The camera cuts away before Apex kills two young children, though their screams haunt him throughout the movie.
• The Chessmaster: Dominick certainly thinks of himself as a master planner, remarking that he's spent every second of the 50,000+ hours he's been in prison formulating his escape plan. Of course, this claim is thrown into major dispute when a teenage girl is capable of utterly dismantling him and every plan he throws at her.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Jeff is subjected to this by Dominick, who stabs him in parts of his body with a poker pulled fresh from the flames just so Becky will hear her father scream in pain.
• Combat Pragmatist: Due to her smaller size, Becky is forced to rely on dirty tricks, booby traps, and whatever she can find lying around to take down the criminals.
• Contrast Montage: The movie at one points cuts back and forth between Becky at school, and Dominick in jail, implying some disturbing parallels.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Many of the kills are absolutely brutal and grotesque, notably Harrison getting shredded by a motorboat propeller and Dominick getting his head ran over by an ATV then lawnmower.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: Becky kills Hammond by slowly reversing an outboard motor into him so he is cut to pieces by the propeller.
• "Die Hard" on an X: Specifically, "Die Hard at a lake house."
• Even Evil Has Standards: Apex will kill defenseless men and even smacks Becky around, but he draws the line at killing children thanks to the increasing regret he feels after Dominick forced him to kill two children during their escape.
• Eye Scream: Becky stabs Dominick in the eye, and the criminal is forced to cut it out, completely onscreen the whole time - first via an attempt by scissors and later more successfully via knife.
• A Father to His Men: Dominick claims as much, calling Apex his "son" and claiming himself and his fellow criminals are a "brotherhood." Pretty much subverted when Dominick casually threatens Harrison's life and later shoots Apex without blinking for standing in his way.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dominick puts up a friendly, polite attitude, even while torturing and killing innocent people.
• Forced to Watch: Dominick tortures and shoots Jeff in front of Becky, and later promises to force Ty to watch as he kills the boy's mother.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Apex, tired of the killing and disgusted with Dominick's actions, betrays his boss and helps Becky kill him, hoping for redemption. Becky just shoots him in the head for revenge, due to him directly having a hand in torturing her father earlier in the film.
• "Home Alone" Antics: The film has been described as “Home Alone on Acid” due to it’s premise of a child using booby traps and improvised weapons against criminals, needless to say this film tones up the bloodshed considerably.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: Dominick and his gang take Becky's family hostage, hoping to use them to get her to hand over the key.
• Improvised Weapon: Becky uses a variety of these, from broken rulers to lawn mowers.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Dominick is interrogating Becky about his missing property over the walkie-talkie:
  Becky: I don't have your stupid key!
  Dominick: I never said it was a key.
• It's Personal: As Kayla tells Dominick
  "Becky is as strong-willed and as vindictive as they come and you just tortured and killed her only living parent."
• Just in Time: Apex returns just as Dominick is about to shoot Becky dead, knocking him away.
• Kick the Dog: The escaped convicts seem to thrive on this trope. Dominick viciously mocks Becky throughout the film, notably taunting her at the end that she's now an orphan, and Cole literally shoots one of Becky's dogs dead just because he "hates dogs."
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Apex tries to give a tearful, remorseful speech only for Becky to shoot him dead.
  "I'm sorry. I should never have left you alone to fix it. There's no undoing the things I've done, but maybe, by saving you—"
• Little Miss Badass: Becky is a petite young teenage girl who proves capable of taking down multiple male adult, hardened criminals with relative ease using her wits and improvised weapons.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Every time Becky is shown handling the key Dominick is after, an otherworldly chime can be heard in the music score, but it is never specified if this means they key is a supernatural artifact of some kind. Then there's the fact that Dominick seems to think the key will allow him to change the world... somehow.
• MacGuffin: Becky finds a key with a valknut engraved on it, and Dominick reveals during the home invasion that he wants it for some unspoken plan. No details are given on what the key opens nor what Dominick's greater plan is.
• Meaningful Name: Apex easily dominates everyone else in the movie with his size and strength.
• Motive Rant: Dominick gives a vague but no less threatening one to Kayla when she calls him out on his reasons for tormenting their family.
  "I wouldn't expect you to understand this, but I'm doing it for your kind as much as mine...you see, the races all were created with a divine purpose, but our modern world has blurred and distorted that purpose. But that's all about to change."
• Mugged for Disguise: When the convicts escape from the prison transport, they kill the guards and steal their uniforms, which they later use to fake a roadblock and lure a motorist into an ambush. Of course, they were probably going to kill the guards regardless.
• Parental Abandonment: Becky's mother died from cancer before the events of the film. Her father is tortured and murdered later, which leaves her an orphan all alone by the end.
• Parent with New Paramour: Becky is still mourning her mom's death, and isn't happy at all to learn her dad's marrying his new girlfriend a year later. She runs off into the woods to fume after he tells her.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Becky initially improvises weapons from her art supplies, including stabbing Cole with sharpened pencils.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Dominick tries to give one to Becky, in a callback to her Badass Boast.
  "There was a little girl. Who had a little bullet right in the middle of her forehead."
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Dominick is a Neo-Nazi with all sorts of Swastika tattoos adorning his head, and he regularly makes jabs at Kayla about her race, even comparing Jeff loving her to dogs who "mix breeds." His untold master plan involves returning "(Kayla's) kind" to beneath white people.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Dominick tortures and shoots her father, Becky goes completely ape-shit and spends the rest of the movie brutally and gruesomely killing every single member of the gang.
• Slasher Smile: Becky has several of these as she proceeds to become more unhinged as the film goes on.
• Shout-Out: Becky's two beloved dogs are named Dora and Diego.
• Smug Snake: Dominick believes himself to be a brilliant revolutionary who will change the world and outsmart all his enemies, but Kayla rightfully calls him out as delusional, backwards and stupid.
• Start of Darkness: At the end of the movie, the sheriff's main concern is that the incident will be Becky's, as he is worried about the sheer amount of violence she committed.
• Sub-Par Supremacist: In the movie, a Neo-nazi group breaks into the summer house of a little girl. With one exception, the group is composed of rather dumb and out-of-shape men, all of which get overwhelmed and killed by a little girl. Said exception, a tall, ruggedly handsome, and muscular man named Apex, is a case of Even Evil Has Standards and actually loathes what the group is doing, doesn't want to kill the people he's being forced to kill by Domnick, and drops out of the group altogether when he gets fed up with how evil the group is.
• Token Good Teammate: Apex regrets the crimes he committed and shows to be relutanct to obey Dominick's, he even becomes The Atoner by the end. It isn't enough for Becky to spare his life, though.
• Too Dumb to Live: Dominick and his fellow supremacists keep underestimating Becky throughout the film. Even when they have her at their mercy more than once they either fail to finish her off quickly or spout monologues. The only one who actually overpowers her ends up having a Heel–Face Turn and spares her life. But he doesn't take into account the fact that he's already complicit in the torture and murder of her father, the death of one of her beloved dogs and is already marked for death.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Becky shoplifts, barely speaks (let alone shows kindness) to anyone except her dogs, and doesn't hesitate in the least to begin slaughtering the criminals invading her home.
• Undying Loyalty: Apex seems to have this for Dominick, which Dominick finds invaluably useful to himself, even challenging Apex to shoot him if his loyalty is wavering. It takes Dominick refusing to let Becky go even after he's obtained the key for Apex to truly turn on him.
• The Unreveal: The films leaves a bunch of unanswered questions about the MacGuffin, to wit:
  • What was Dominick going to do with the key?
  • Who hid the key in Wilsons' cabin?
  • How did Dominick knew exactly where in the house the key was hidden?
• Villainous Breakdown: From the moment he steps into the lake house and finds his sought-after key missing, Dominick goes from calm and collected to flustered and panicked, and gets increasingly volatile until he's screaming in rage and showing his true, sadistic colors by the end of the film.
• We Can Rule Together: After getting fed up with her tenacity and realizing her murderous potential, Dominick offers Becky a place at his side. She responds by telling him to "shut (his) face."
• Worthy Opponent: Dominick seems genuinely impressed after Becky has killed most of his men, offering her a We Can Rule Together deal. Becky rejects this immediately.
• Would Hurt a Child: Dominick's entire gang are trying to kill Becky to retrieve the key, but Dominick is an especially bad example. He forces Apex to kill two children during their escape and threatens to blow Ty's leg off before trying to throttle the boy.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Apex comes to feel this way after he does hurt children.