‘Windfall’ Is an Intriguing Crime Thriller with A Class-Conscious Twist

In an era of such massive inequality, it’s almost surprising we have so few class-revenge crime thrillers. Windfall has blown in to fill in the gap, providing a gradually growing, twisting thriller with considerable thematic resonance in the modern era. It’s a good but simple thriller with a stunning ending and some interesting concepts, all solid elements whose ultimate impact is blunted by a bit by an undercooked middle. At the same time, its ending and thematic resonance to our world are nearly worth the rhetorical price of admission alone.

In Windfall, a desperate man, Nobody (Jason Segel), breaks into an isolated home when its billionaire owner CEO (Jesse Plemons) happens to arrive unexpectedly with his wife, Wife (Lily Collins). At first it’s a simple snatch-and-grab robbery, but situations escalate that curtail Nobody’s options until a tense third act that changes everyone’s life forever.

It’s clear from the simplicity of the plot construction and the archetypal naming of characters that the simple plot belies an acute class sensibility—it becomes increasingly clear that Nobody is the antagonist but not the ‘villain,’ and CEO is a protagonist but no a ‘hero.’ Segel’s Nobody isn’t cruel or particularly frightening—he’s evidently desperate and expected to be alone, gradually driven to more extreme choices until turning around is no longer possible.

Plemons’ CEO is a shark with a thin veneer of humanity pasted over his rows of shark teeth… he’s as self-aggrandizing as he is sociopathic and pathetic. Lily Collins’ Wife has the greatest arc in the film, gradually coming to terms with her dissatisfaction in a marriage that’s merely useful and nothing greater. As she comes to realize her own identification with Nobody, dynamics start to evolve in interesting ways.

The first and third acts are strong and well-paced, with the third act’s final minutes being nearly strong enough to land the entire film entirely, but we’ll get to that. The second act is where most of the film’s weaknesses lie. Stakes do escalate but many of the escalations seem a tad contrived, a sort of stalling for time. The night where the trio is waiting should be uniformly tense but it isn’t always, as there are many moments where one feels the length and the lag in tension and pacing. That said, the conclusion is a stunner that wraps the yarn nicely with a deep unease.

Contributing to the occasional feeling that the film’s middle moments are a little thin is cinematography that is passable but which makes this small world with a beautiful house feel small at times, constrained. Not Nostromo-confined, but limited. The moment where the plot shifts into inevitable tragedy territory, a scene involving a Gardener (Omar Leyva), what happens seems less inevitable than arbitrary. It’s not devoid of power, but its power is blunted by a feeling that the escalation is cheap.

Altogether, Windfall uses genre trappings well to interrogate a situation which upends our feelings of who the villain really is… the complicating thing is that it forces us to look past immediate actions to see who characters really are, and that’s a rarer thing than you often see in films of this genre. The performances are good across the board, though it’s Lily Collins’ turn here that is the strongest, most nuanced, and memorable. If the twists felt a little more organic, the plots’ events more varied it would land harder, but the ending packs a memorable punch while its themes are thoroughly poignant. It’s a worthy watch.

Windfall debuts on Netflix Friday, March 18th.