Inheritance is an American 2020 Psychological Thriller film starring Lily Collins, and Simon Pegg in a rare dramatic role.
Archer Monroe, the banker patriarch of a wealthy New York family, dies. In his will, son William (a Congressional candidate in a tight re-election race) gets far more money than daughter Lauren (a District Attorney). But Lauren receives a strange video from her father which takes her to a hidden bunker buried on the family estate. In the bunker is a secret which could destroy everything her family has built.
The film also stars Patrick Warburton, Connie Nielsen and Chace Crawford.
Not to be confused with the Australian play of the same name.
This film provides examples of:
- Alone with the Psycho: Half the movie plays with this when it comes to Lauren's discussions with Morgan, and his telling her about his predicament being her father's prisoner. The movie plays fast-and-loose with the question of whether he's truly an innocent victim, or actually a psycho who deserved to be there. Turns out, it's the latter.
- Big Fancy House: The Monroe estate.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the end, Morgan is dead, and Lauren and Catherine set fire to the bunker with his body inside. Unfortunately, Harold and one other person are dead, Lauren knows of Archer's sins (including that he had another child from an affair), her relationship with her brother is in pieces and she now has to live with the possibility that she's actually Morgan's daughter.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Played with concerning Archer and Morgan. On one hand, Morgan raped Archer's wife, and threatened to blackmail him with the knowledge of the dead pedestrian if Archer didn't let him go. On the other hand, rather than try to take responsibility and turn Morgan over to the police, Archer just decides to lock him up in a bunker for thirty years, with no intention of ever letting him go. Sure, Morgan's a monster, but Archer's choice results in Morgan becoming even more unhinged over the years, and considering some of the shady stuff Archer got up to in the years since, it's hard to feel much sympathy for him when we find out that Morgan's the one who killed him.
- Boom, Headshot!: How Morgan meets his end, thanks to Catherine.
- The Confidant: Morgan became a rather twisted one of these for Archer, who revealed many of the family secrets to him over the years of Morgan's captivity. As a result, Morgan knows as much, if not more, about the Monroe family as they do.
- The Consigliere: Harold Thewlis, the family lawyer, was this to Archer, and is pretty much the only person apart from Morgan who knows where all of the Monroe family skeletons are buried.
- Corrupt Politician: Lauren's brother William, a Congressman who Lauren later discovers has built his entire career on shady dealings, many of which were achieved with the help of their father and (unbeknownst to her) Lauren herself.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Towards the end, Lauren discovers that the man she knows as "Morgan Warner" is actually named Carson Thomas, and the real Morgan was the victim of the car accident from thirty years earlier.
- Deal with the Devil: Morgan manages to persuade Lauren to let him go, and in exchange, he promises to disappear and never tell a living soul of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance, or of any of her family's indiscretions. Unfortunately for Lauren, he never intended to honor the deal.
- Faux Affably Evil: Morgan. He acts polite and quite friendly towards Lauren for most of the film, purely to gain her trust so that she'd release him from the bunker. Once she does, however, his true nature comes out in no time at all.
- Foreshadowing: Archer's said to have died of a heart attack, and his behavior at the start seems consistent with this. However, the camera also shows us, as he dies, that his face has turned purplish and his eyes are severely bloodshot - generally not physical signs of a heart attack. A poisoning, however... William even mentions at the funeral to Lauren how surprising it was, considering that their father was always healthy as a horse.
- I Am Your Father: Morgan's last words to Lauren before Catherine blows his head off. It's ambiguous if he's telling the truth, or simply messing with Lauren's head, but the look on Catherine's face suggests it may be the truth.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Implied to be the real reason why Archer kept Morgan locked in the bunker. He can't kill Morgan, so simply having him disappear and keeping him prisoner was a punishment he felt more comfortable with.
- Idiot Ball: Seems to be a Monroe family trait. Archer not only picks it up by deciding to keep Carson Thomas hostage in a bunker for thirty years instead of killing him (as he had originally planned to do anyway), but he tells the guy nearly everything about his family over that time, including many of their shady dealings, the secret child he bore during an affair, as well as enough information about his daughter Lauren that by the time Carson meets her as "Morgan", he's armed with enough insight into her personality to be able to play her like a fiddle. Lauren then picks it up by ultimately deciding to let "Morgan" go free near the end, without even waiting for the results of the fingerprint check that would have confirmed his real identity, thus revealing his story as a lie.
- Irony: Morgan says that Archer planned to keep him locked up in the bunker for the rest of his life, and that he would "die there". Guess what happens to him in the end?
- Jerkass Has a Point: Morgan may have been a jerk in threatening Archer with reporting the death of the pedestrian, but that doesn't justify being kept prisoner in a bunker for thirty years. Of course, once we discover the real reason that Archer locked him up, it becomes at least a little bit more understandable...
- Madness Mantra: Morgan recites the recipe for Key Lime Pie over and over.
- Mama Wolf: Catherine, as Morgan discovers at the end.
- Manipulative Bastard: Morgan.
- Oh, Crap!: Lauren upon discovering Morgan's true history with her father, and immediately after, that his flight never actually left the airport...
- Poor Communication Kills: Lauren doesn't think to show a picture of Morgan to her mother, or direct more officers to search for records of his identity before she releases him. Nor did Archer include any rationale in his video for why Morgan was there. Any of these simple actions could have avoided the ensuing mayhem.
- Posthumous Character: Archer Monroe, who dies at the start of the film, and whose screen-time after that is entirely relegated to flashbacks.
- Rape as Drama: The real reason why Archer and Carson were driving on the winding road late at night before they hit the pedestrian: Archer discovered that Carson had just drugged and raped Catherine at their party, and was taking him somewhere secluded to kill him. Carson tells Lauren that she's his daughter as a result of the rape, and it's implied that he may be right.
- Revenge Before Reason: After deciding to release Morgan, Lauren gives him an offshore bank account with a million dollars, and a private jet to take him to the Cayman Islands. Mere moments after Lauren leaves him at the airport, he kills Harold and the pilot, and returns to the Monroe estate to try and kill Lauren and her mother, despite being given a chance to walk away scott-free. Ultimately justified, however, by the fact that, for Morgan, revenge is all he cares about, not money or even escape.
- Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Quite literally, with the underground bunker hidden on the Monroe property that Morgan has been kept in for the past thirty years.
- The Un-Favorite: If the will is any indication, Lauren was definitely this for her father. It's subsequently revealed that, while he loved her, he never forgave her for her decision to become a District Attorney, as opposed to going into private practice and becoming the family's lawyer. His making of the video and turning Morgan over to her seems to imply that he at least believes that she's more capable at cleaning up messes than her brother. Of course, the possibility that she's actually Morgan's daughter may have contributed to his treatment of her as well.
- Unreliable Narrator: Morgan tells Lauren that, thirty years earlier, he and Archer were drunkenly driving down a road in the middle of nowhere, and Archer accidentally hit a pedestrian jogging on the side of the road. He told Morgan to help him bury the body, and when Morgan threatened to tell the police of the accident, Archer locked him in the bunker. While all of this is technically true, Morgan omitted one important fact: that the reason they were on the road in the first place wasn't due to some drunken bender, it's because Morgan had just drugged and raped Lauren's mother, and Archer was driving them somewhere secluded so that he could kill him.
- Video Will: The video message that Archer leaves for Lauren, which kickstarts the plot.
