Back in 2020, revenge got a youthful face-lift in the form of Becky, an indie thriller that saw your typical woman vs. scumbags movie and twist some of the rules by making its protagonist a teenage girl with near-ferral levels of rage lurking withing her fourteen year old body. While it proved ultimately not to reinvent the wheel too much despite the central de-aging, it became a worthy watch due to Lulu Wilson’s lead performance, some appropriately gnarly kills and a bizarre casting decision that saw Paul Blart himself, Kevin James, playing a tattooed, bearded, neo-nazi.
Once Becky emerged victorious, but bloodied, from the carnage (hardly a spoiler considering we’re reviewing a sequel), the idea of a sequel focusing on where such a volatile character could pop up next seemed like something worth pursuing. Well, hey presto, here’s the sequel that features the return of Wilson, a new directing team and a brand new comedic actor cast as a murderous, hateful douchebag. Let’s get down to business – there’s killing that needs doing.
After slaughtering the quartet of neo-nazis that invaded her family summer home and killed her father, we rejoin Becky – now sixteen – as she attempts to make her way through life while despising the majority of the human race she comes in contact with. But after pretending to be a nice girl in order to get adopted and then immediately run away from her overly saccharine foster parents, we eventually catch up with her and her faithful dog, Diego, after a couple of years after honing those burgeoning survival skills and breaking out from other foster homes. She has settled down with the elderly Elena Cahn who once picked Becky up hitchhiking and subsequently took her in as a lodger, and while both are fairly misanthropic towards other people, Elena’s kindness has helped take the edge off of Becky’s rather remarkable rage.
Or, at least she did… You see, there’s always seem to be predatory, cruel people lurking out in the world and once again, Becky seems to inadvertently run smack into them when three guys walk into the diner where she works and start acting the fool. The trio are members of an extremist group who call themselves The Nobel Boys and are on their way to meet with their cell leader, Darryl who lives in a remote cabin in the area, but after Becky’s typically reactionary behavior to their misogyny, they fancy getting some payback.
In the resulting carnage, tragedy occurs and in an act that proves that these guys blatantly haven’t seen John Wick, they also steal Diego which sets the tenacious teen on their tails with dreams of a protracted and brutal revenge dancing in her head. However, after finding and infiltrating Darryl’s cabin and discovering a flash drive with sensitive details about the true scale of The Noble Boys, all out war inevitably breaks out.
When establishing a sequel, it’s always best to establish the pattern of what you want to save, what you want to ditch and what you want to change slightly, and I have to say, The Wrath Of Becky manages to do this rather well. To boil the first film down to its bare essentials, it was basically the story of an unhinged girl taking on the dregs of humanity, so that’s exactly where directors Suzanne Cooke and Matt Angel (replacing first movie helmers Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion) start – but where the first movie was stark and deceptively quiet, the decision has been made to camp things up a bit for Becky’s return. Seeing as we’ve already bore witness to the the ferocious rage that boils within her guts and we’ve also seen her work through her intense angst with her doomed father after her mother passed from cancer, the sequel wisely choses to focus less on already covered ground and push things forward. After a prologue that sees out scheming heroine pretend to play nice with her new foster parents right down to a beaming smile and strategic pigtails and then duck out barely an hour after she came through the door, we skim forward a few years to find her survival skills as razor sharp as her knife, but the turmoil within seems to be barely being held in check thanks to the kindness she’s been shown by Denise Burse’s understanding Elena.
Of course kind people in a violent revenge film don’t tend to stick around to the end credits, and soon we’re introduced to the villains of the piece – but to keep the political thread of keeping the bad guys the kind of people ripped from the headlines and various Facebook posts, The Wrath Of Becky swaps out Neo-Nazis for extremist misogynists who claim to be trying to save their country wear their distain for anything that isn’t male or white on their sleeves.
However, much like the first movie, many of The Wrath Of Becky’s best moments come from watching a tiny, vicious girl bloodily dispatch a colourful bunch of bickering idiots and also keeping in vogue with Kevin James’ appearance in the original, we’ve got yet other comedic actor pulling bad guy duties in the form of Stifler himself, Seann William Scott. Not is it continually facinating to watch guys who play big old goofs suddenly switch to play quiet, intense facists, but you find yourself wondering that if Becky gets a third outing, who would the filmmakers cast to be the antagonist? David Spade? Andy Samberg? Rob Schneider? The possibilities are endless.
However, amusing stunt casting aside, it’s ultimately all about Becky and anyone who found themselves drawn to the sight of of Wilson’s big blue eyes burning through a mask of freshly sprayed blood will find they have a lot to celebrate. With a slightly more mature Becky to play with (signified by a great moment where she opts not to head into battle with her iconic woolly fox hat), Wilson ensures that her character certainly hasn’t mellowed no that she’s hit a no-so-sweet sixteen. Also, a more looser, jokier style that the original means that Becky’s newest rampage is more overtly fun than the often stern first film that ultimately takes its title character into some rather wild places by the end.
But even though the prospect of a third Becky sounds fun and certainly seems possible with such dangling threads as that mysterious key she took from the Nazis in film one or the introduction of Kate Siegal’s CIA agent, I have to say that even with the infusion of more laughs into Becky’s rampages, the series is still missing that little something to push it into becoming something truly special.
Still, you certainly still get what you pay for as Becky once again gets to strut her stuff and shoot hateful idiots through the face with crossbows or stuff their mouths with grenades. But while some of the action is staged slightly awkwardly, I genuinely have to say I would definitely be interested in seeing what (or who) Becky does next – I mean, if she’s graduated to rocket launchers at the end of this one, imagine what shit she’ll pull next.
They truly do grow up so fast these days…
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