Inheritance (2020 film)

Inheritance
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Vaughn Stein
Written by	Matthew Kennedy
Produced by	Richard B. Lewis David Wulf Arianne Fraser
Starring	Lily Collins Simon Pegg Connie Nielsen Chace Crawford Patrick Warburton
Cinematography	Michael Merriman
Edited by	Kristi Shimek
Music by	Marlon Espino
Production companies	Ingenious Southpaw Entertainment Redline Entertainment Highland Film Group
Distributed by	Vertical Entertainment DirecTV Cinema
Release date	May 22, 2020 (2020-05-22)
Running time	111 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$0.3 million

Inheritance is a 2020 American thriller film directed by Vaughn Stein and written by Matthew Kennedy. The film stars Lily Collins, Simon Pegg, Connie Nielsen, Chace Crawford and Patrick Warburton. Inheritance was released on May 22, 2020, by Vertical Entertainment. It received generally negative reviews from critics.

Archer Monroe, the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful political family in New York City, dies. His estate is divided among his family: Catherine, his wife; William, his son, a politician running for re-election; and Lauren, his daughter, the 30-year-old Manhattan District Attorney. Family attorney, Harold Thewlis, privately shows Lauren a posthumous video message her father left her. In the video, he says he has a secret to tell her that she must take to her grave. He directs her to a secret underground bunker on the family's property. There she finds a captive man who identifies himself as Morgan Warner, who says he has been held prisoner for 30 years.

Morgan claims he was Archer's friend and business partner until one night while driving drunk, they killed a pedestrian. At Archer's insistence, they covered up the crime before Archer took Morgan prisoner to prevent his exposing the homicide. In the intervening years, Archer treated Morgan like a confessor and admitted many secrets. As proof, Morgan directs Lauren to where the pedestrian's body is buried. Lauren also follows Morgan's clues and finds Archer's longtime mistress, with whom he had a son, as well as evidence that Archer paid bribes to aid his children being elected to public office. Lauren is eventually convinced to free Morgan, and, believing he was wronged, directs Harold to set up an offshore bank account and charter a private jet so Morgan can disappear.

While Morgan is asleep, Lauren takes a sample of his fingerprints and sends them for identification. The fingerprints are matched and the file is sent to the Monroe house. Catherine sees the file and is terrified by photos of Morgan, whom she identifies as "Carson", claiming he is an evil man. Lauren learns that Morgan/Carson's flight never left and Harold has been murdered. Returning to the Monroe house, Lauren finds that Carson has abducted Catherine and taken her to the bunker. Carson subdues Lauren and reveals that thirty years ago, he drugged and raped Catherine. Archer was taking Carson somewhere to kill him when they hit the pedestrian, and Archer suddenly decided to keep Carson alive for decades. Archer had just recently decided to murder Carson with poison, but Carson had succeeded in getting the poison and murdering Archer with it. Lauren fights back and, during their struggle, Carson claims he is Lauren's biological father before Catherine seizes his gun and shoots him dead. Lauren and Catherine pour gasoline throughout the bunker and set it aflame, destroying all evidence of Carson's captivity and the crimes that the Monroe family has committed.

• Lily Collins as Lauren Monroe
• Simon Pegg as Morgan Warner/Carson
• Connie Nielsen as Catherine Monroe
• Chace Crawford as William Monroe
• Michael Beach as Harold Thewlis
• Marque Richardson as Scott Monroe
• Patrick Warburton as Archer Monroe
• Rebecca Adams as Jen Monroe
• Mariyah Francis as Claire Monroe
• Joe Herrera as Detective Emilio Sanchez
• Lucas Alexander Ayoub as Eddie Parker
• Christina DeRosa as Sofia Fiore

In November 2018, it was announced Simon Pegg and Kate Mara had joined the cast of the film, with Vaughn Stein directing from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy. Richard B. Lewis, David Wulf, Dan Reardon, and Santosh Govindaraju produced the film, under their Southpaw Entertainment, WulfPak Productions, and Convergent Media banners, respectively.^[2] From January to March 2019, Connie Nielsen, Chace Crawford and Patrick Warburton joined the cast of the film,^[3][4] while Lily Collins joined to replace Mara.^[5] In April 2019, Marque Richardson joined the cast of the film.^[6]

Principal photography began in February 2019 in Birmingham, Alabama.^[7]

It was scheduled to have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 20, 2020.^[8][9] However, the festival was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[10] Vertical Entertainment and DirecTV Cinema acquired distribution rights to the film and set it for a May 22, 2020 release.^[11]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 23% of 56 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "A would-be thriller that waits far too long to embrace the daffy potential of its bizarre premise, this Inheritance should be steadfastly refused."^[12] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 31 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.^[13]

In the months after its video on demand release domestically (United States and Canada), Inheritance was shown in theatres in six other countries, earning $304,931 in foreign box office receipts.^[1]

• Inheritance at IMDb