Charlie, his wife Michelle, Charlie's brother Josh, and Josh's girlfriend Mina decide to rent an oceanview house for a weekend getaway. After Mina's application for the house is denied for no reason, Charlie submits one and is accepted. Upon arriving at the remote property, the group meets the property owner Taylor, whom Mina confronts for denying her application believing it was racially motivated. Taylor denies this and leaves, although he does return later that day to drop off a telescope for the group to use, which alarms Mina. The group settles in and it quickly becomes clear that someone is observing the unaware guests. After Josh and Michelle go to bed, Mina and Charlie have sex in the shower. The next morning, a hungover Mina and Charlie agree they can never be intimate again, while Josh unintentionally makes Michelle paranoid over Charlie's faithfulness after mentioning how Charlie cheated on a former girlfriend. While in the shower, Mina discovers a camera in the showerhead and alerts Charlie. Freaked out, Mina goes to call the police, but Charlie stops her as alerting the police would risk someone finding the footage of the pair having sex. Michelle uses drugs and calls Taylor to fix the hot tub. Mina privately confronts Taylor about the hidden camera, which Taylor claims to be unaware of and moves to call the police himself. Mina tries to stop him, which Josh witnesses and assuming Taylor is attacking his girlfriend, beats Taylor unconscious. As the group argues over what to do, Mina tells everyone about the hidden camera in the shower. After the group leaves Taylor in the bathroom to discuss what to do next, a masked man sneaks inside and smothers Taylor to death. When the others return and realize Taylor is not breathing, they assume that Josh has accidentally killed him. A frantic Michelle demands they call the police, but Charlie refuses to let his brother go to jail, suggesting that they stage Taylor falling off the nearby cliff into the ocean by accident. A despondent Michelle goes to bed while the others carry Taylor's body to the cliff. When they drop the body it gets stuck on an outcrop, forcing Josh to go down and push it into the sea. While this is happening, Michelle is stalked in the house by the masked man who broadcasts the tape of Mina and Charlie having sex on the television. Devastated, Michelle drives away in the car only to run over a spike strip and crash into a tree. Mina realizes that they need to find the camera transceiver to destroy the footage of Josh assaulting Taylor. She and Josh go searching for it while Charlie goes to help Michelle. He finds her dead body before being murdered by the masked man. Mina and Josh break into a locked room under the house, but only find old boxes of junk. The footage of Mina and Charlie in the shower is sent to Josh's phone and he confronts her over it. Hearing someone enter the house, Josh goes downstairs believing it is Charlie. The masked man kills Josh and then hunts for Mina, who manages to sneak outside. He pursues outside where Mina, who is disoriented by the fog, accidentally falls off the cliff and into the ocean. The masked man returns to the house, removing any evidence and the collection of cameras he installed. The man rents a new property and installs cameras into it. Oblivious new inhabitants rent the locations, and the masked man attacks a sleeping couple.
Cast
Dan Stevens as Charlie, Michelle's husband and Josh's brother
Alison Brie as Michelle, Charlie's wife
Sheila Vand as Mina, Josh's girlfriend and Charlie's business partner
Jeremy Allen White as Josh, Mina's boyfriend and Charlie's brother
Toby Huss as Taylor
Anthony Molinari as the man
Production
In March 2019, it was announced Alison Brie, Dan Stevens, Sheila Vand and Jeremy Allen White had joined the cast of the film, with Dave Franco directing from a screenplay he wrote alongside Joe Swanberg. Franco, Elizabeth Haggard, Ben Stillman, Teddy Schwarzman, Swanberg, Christopher Storer served as producers on the film, under their Ramona Films and Black Bear Pictures banners, respectively, while Michael Heimler and Sean Durkin acted as executive producers. Principal photography began on April 22, 2019, lasting through May 24, in Bandon and Portland, Oregon. Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans composed the film's score, released by Lakeshore Records.
Release
In April 2020, IFC Films acquired distribution rights to the film and scheduled it to be released on July 24, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film held its premiere at the Vineland Drive-In theatre in City of Industry, California on June 18, 2020. The film made an estimated $130,000 from 251 theaters in its first day, and $420,871 over the weekend, topping the box office. It also was the top-rented film on Apple TV and other streaming services, becoming the second film to ever top both the box office and rental charts.
Reception
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 73% based on 156 reviews, with an weighted average of 6.36/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Some tricky genre juggling makes The Rental a bit of a fixer-upper, but effective chills and a solid cast make this a fine destination for horror fans." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying: "The Rental would have worked purely as a compelling character study about four dysfunctional adults unraveling over the course of a long weekend — but when the presence of a homicidal maniac is introduced to the proceedings, the transition to horror film is brilliant and wacky and pretty darn great." Owen Gleiberman of Variety said the film had "tense flavor and skill" and wrote: "There's some crafty artistry at work in The Rental, and also some fairly standard pandering, which feels like a violation of the movie's better instincts. That said, most of it is skillful and engrossing enough to establish Franco as a director to watch."
Possible sequel
Franco has voiced his interest in a sequel, saying: "It was the intention from the beginning to leave the ending ambiguous enough that we carry on the story if given a chance... I have a very strong idea for what I would want to do with a sequel."
