Windfall Tries to Be Noir But Can’t Quite Pull It Off

At their core, noirs are about sex, sensuality, and seduction. Windfall, Netflix’s new film about the home invasion of a tech billionaire, lacks the intrigue and allure to live up to its genre.

Jason Segel, Lily Collins, and Jesse Plemons in a still from Windfall. (Netflix)


Everything about Charlie McDowell’s new film, Windfall — the marketing, the design, even the opening credits — promises a Hitchcock-meets-mumblecore experience. The film begins with a long, still shot of the luxury mission-style home in which the drama will unfold. Underneath this oddly still image, a tense soundtrack plays, one that sounds like Bernard Herrmann composed music for a meditation app.

What follows with Windfall keeps better company with a cycle of high-strung art dramas that center on horrible white millennials — sometimes rich, always lonely — stalking around luxury spaces and fairy-lit barns. Its contemporaries include Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear, a superbly weird hipster nightmare; the chilling, claustrophobic odyssey that is Night Moves; and, lest we forget, Ex Machina, which gave us the Oscar Isaac meme that belongs in whatever time capsule we one day send into space.

So, where, exactly, does Windfall fall?

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