Becky (2020) *

Directed by:  Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott

Starring:  Lulu Wilson, Kevin James, Joel McHale, Amanda Brugel, Isaiah Rockcliffe, Robert Maillet

Mixing the worst elements of Desperate Hours and Home Alone, Becky is violent in a manner so over-the-top, it is almost challenging you to cry uncle.   A bad guy isn't just stabbed in the eye, his eyeball hangs perilously from the socket and has to be cut off with a knife.   In another instance, a villain isn't simply run over with a car, we are shown the guy's head being squashed repeatedly into the grass.    These unnecessarily gory flashes of violence are not entertaining, but sickening.   It doesn't matter much, because Becky has a protagonist we don't sympathize with and a plot we don't care about.  Comedian Kevin James is cast in "his first dramatic role" and he should have held out for something better.   Almost any other movie would qualify.

James is Dominick, a Neo-Nazi inmate who escapes with other inmates to track down a key located in the basement of a secluded home in the woods.   The home is now occupied by Becky (Wilson), an angry, cynical teen who lost her mother to cancer a year ago, and her understanding, patient father (McHale).   The two are joined by the dad's new fiancee (Brugel) and her young son (Rockcliffe). 
Becky, in a fit of rage after discovering her father is going to remarry, lights out for a tree fort in the adjacent woods which is almost as big as some single bedroom apartments.    She is not present when Dominick and his cohorts invade the home looking for the key.   What does the key unlock?   We aren't told, but it is quite important.   Who has it?   Becky, who came across it while rummaging downstairs in the basement.    Dominick was reportedly in prison for nine years.   His plan hinges on the unlikelihood that his key would still be stored away neatly in a small box on a window sill in a basement of someone else's home for nine years.   He should consider himself fortunate that the key and its accompanying box weren't dumped years ago and that Becky actually has it.

I don't know why Dominick had to made into a Neo-Nazi with multiple swastikas tattooed on his body, including a prominent one on the back of his bald head.    It is overkill.   He could have just as easily been written as a violent sociopath, minus the racist rants, looking for a key to a safety deposit box which houses riches to fund his escape.    James doesn't look comfortable reciting white supremacist philosophies.   The additional motivation wasn't needed.   While we're at it, Becky is written as far too bitter and a borderline sociopath herself to be someone we root for.   It's as if the villains conveniently came along just so Becky had someone to act out her pent-up aggression on.  And boy does she ever.  It is uncomfortable to watch a thirteen-year-old kill people so sadistically, even if it is the creepy bad guys.

Was Becky made for those who relish in blood, gore, and disturbing violence?   If so, then what about the rest of us?    I guess we can't fault the performances, which can't possibly transcend the muck going on here.   Wilson and James play the parts as written, although I still couldn't completely buy James as Dominick.   Maybe I'm simply too used to him playing lovable nice guys, which he should get back to doing as soon as possible if movies like Becky offer him the only opportunity to stretch his talents.