Movie Review: 'Villains' Proves Skarsgard Is More Than Pennywise

If you think you have bad luck? You have nothing on Mickey (Bill Skarsgard) and Jules (Maika Monroe), the protagonists of the new movie Villains. Having successfully committed what they believe to be the last robbery they needed to achieve their dream of moving to Florida to sell seashells by the sea shore, they wind up running out of gas. That's not the worst of it, however.

Knowing they have little time for an escape, Mickey and Jules need to find transportation and fast. When they spot a nearby driveway they think they may have a solution to their problem. Inside this well appointed home is a car in the garage that they could steal and use to make a hasty getaway. But, once inside they can't find the keys and neither of them can hotwire.

What to do? They decide to siphon gas from the car but into what? They decide to see if there is a container in the basement they can use to get the gas and get back to their own stopped vehicle. It is here where Mickey and Jules' luck goes from bad to worse. In the basement, chained to the wall, is a very girl (Blake Baumgartner), approximately nine or 10 years old.

That she is chained to the wall is a strong enough indication of the messed up situation Mickey and Jules have stumbled into. That however, is nothing compared to what happens when they fail to free the girl from her chains, she bites Mickey on the hand and his scream alerts the newly arrived owners of the home, George (Jeffrey Donovan) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick).

As you can imagine, the kind of people who have a small girl chained up in their basement are not exactly the kind of people you want to stumble across when you're making a hasty getaway. What happens next however, you are going to have to discover for yourself by going to see Villains which just keeps getting better from where my description leaves off.

Villains is a wonderfully weird crime-horror hybrid in which writer-directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen do a tremendous job of continuously ratcheting up the crazy and the suspense. You may think you have an idea where this story is going throughout, but the twists and turns are better than you expect. Villains keeps a crazy pace to go with some wonderfully daffy and dark characters.

Bill Skarsgard is absolutely brilliant as Mickey. Leaving behind the makeup of Pennywise, the It clown, Skarsgard proves he can be just as exciting without makeup as he was with it. Mickey is weird and charismatic, his darting eyes and quick tongue a comedic wonder. A scene with Skarsgard attempting to convince Sedgwick to free him is filled with lively comic tension.

Maika Monroe's part is a tad more dutiful and mundane but she does well to give it some life. I enjoyed Monroe's chemistry with Skarsgard, especially in the visual motif the directors use to communicate the unique way, in which these two criminal charmers communicate with each other. They have a lived in chemistry that I really, really enjoyed.

I can tell you nothing about Donovan and Sedgwick's characters however as to describe these characters would break the magic of these two incredibly creepy, fun performances. The movie mines tension from just how odd these two characters are and I adore that quality. Villains has many of the trappings of a bottle thriller, one limited to a single location. Thus we need colorful characters to beat back the familiar and Donovan and Sedgwick are wonderfully, creepily colorful.

Villains is one of my favorite movies of 2019. I love the eccentricities of these characters and this wonderful script. Villains is dark and violent in many ways but the production design and the oddball dark humor separate Villains from so many similar horror thrillers. The cast is wonderful and the story is filled with unexpected moments of humor and horror.

Villains opens in limited release on September 20th.