The Owners

The premise isn't terribly original, but it's worth watch for the incredibly creepy performance of the actor who plays the old man, and it never got boring

What I didn't enjoy about The Owners is how big of a letdown it is after the film embraces its latter half twists. The first half is heist+home invasion clichés galore - a bunch of thugs looking to make some quick money by robbing a rich house fail to realize that the resident couple has some secrets of their own to hide. This plotline has now nearly run its course and needs truckloads of inventiveness to be taken seriously. While there have been a few surprises in this subgenre such as Don't Breathe and Villains, I don't think this film makes it to that list.

The screenplay meanders, the characters are all unlikeable (the film uses the pregnancy ploy to make audiences care for Mary, the character played by Maisie Williams, but it doesn't work), and the overall slackening of pace do the film no favours. There are zero scares and it's some bloodshed alone that tags it under the horror category. Watch one of the films mentioned above (or M.N Shyamalan's The Visit) instead.

Well directed horror flick with great intensity. I enjoyed watching it and every character added an element to the film. I never knew what exactly was going to happen which was good. Overall, the rating this received is funny to me..... and is probably the reason why we constantly get generic horror films. It's a 7.5 for me.

I thought with Williams as the lead the rest of the cast would be low budget level actors but they all do a fine job, particularly McCoy who was Dr Who few years after Tom Baker. It has the usual idiot trope consisting of an utter tool, a mild tool, the coward that gets roped into dumb things by his tool friends, and the girlfriend that didn't want to be there in the first place. Follows a fairly standard formula of a house robbery gone wrong but without being predictable and it ramps up the tension quite well as the violence escalates. Enjoyable thriller overall.

This movie started off well with some great acting from all concerned; the bad guy was particularly vile and that boded well for a good bloodbath/massacre but it all went downhill rather quickly as nothing much except a bit of a drama out of a crisis unfolded with little to no real horror; more of a comedy with a bit of drama and a smidgin' of horror thrown in for good measure.

Sylvester McCoy makes the film and I have always liked him; even as Doctor Who as he brings a lot more to the table than most actors these days but all of the actors were really spot on but they just had nothing to really work with scriptwise and I don't know about anyone else but I figured out what was possibly behind the safe from the beginning so the mystery was gone for me quite early on.

Disappointed as it looked like this could be a rival to the USA Don't Breathe movie but it has absolutely nothing in common but it does get an average 5 hatchets out of 10 as it will fill an average Friday nights viewing.