Inheritance

After her mother's funeral. Maya (Phoebe Dynevor) gets a chance to connect with her estranged father Sam (Rhys Ifans.)

He offers to take her to Egypt where he claims to work in real estate. Even asking Maya to get a job to entice people to launder money in property.

However Sam disappears and is later contacted by people who claim to have abducted him.

They want Maya to retrieve a hard disk from a safe deposit box in India.

It leads her to question just who her father is. He had a false passport, previously worked in espionage and Interpol are also after him.

Directed by Neil Burger on an Iphone. This is a guerilla thriller shot in Egypt, India and South Korea without permits. Some task in India as the cops like to have their backhanders even if you have all the proper paperwork.

Once the post production grading is done, the film looks quite good. Although it could be better lit.

The story is hackneyed. You sense Maya is being used by her father. The international locales add to the movie.

The movie is pretty good for an indy film. The story is meh, you pretty much got it figured out. The action sequence is also meh. But what really made this film incredible is the filming style. I don't believe I've ever seen a film this way.

The camera is like a person going along with the character. It is not a found footage, which I hate, or like a 1st person view. It is just different and it worked. I find the camera work smooth and immersive. It literally feels like you are there with the character. It is even better because the film takes place in multiple locations in the world.

In sense it feels like you are taking a vacation to Egypt, India, and South Korea, literally the camera is on the street level and you get to see everything around you like you are actually there.

Overall I enjoyed it. 5/10.

Forgettable film from start to finish , besides being in Egypt, India and South Korea. It is true that there is no tension sauf a little in Egypt and more of it in India. I don't know why this movie was made considering what happens in the end.

Is it iPhone filming prowess advertisement? Does it bear a hidden message? Is it a sort of wicked encouragement?

At least, I got to travel without a visa to three beautiful countries glued to Maya.

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 5
• Production value/impact: 4.5
• Development: 6.5
• Realism: 5
• Entertainment: 6
• Acting: 6
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 7
• VFX: 7.5
• Music/score/sound: 6
• Depth: 3
• Logic: 2
• Flow: 7
• Drama/mini thriller/conspiracy/mini action: 5
• Ending: 3.

I enjoyed how the camera was weld for this film. Other reviewers I've read seem displeased by the "held camcorder" style, however I found this attempt to be a different and fresh way to use it. For instance, the shots of how pedestrians looked at the main character as she's walking through the streets. It focused on how others perceive her rather than how she perceived her surroundings. Which for the India sequences was true to form. The men are known to gawk at American women and cat call them profusely. Also, never have I felt like an actual tourist to to the many different countries visited in the movie. The tone, pace, shots, extras, and all together vibe made me feel as if I was actually visiting the pyramids in Egypt, travels a train through India, and walked the streets of South Korea. I watch a lot of film and never have felt what it must be like to be a tourist in the locations the movie was at.

Using only iPhones for filming definitely gives this project a unique flavour, a distinctive identity, especially from a filmmaking perspective.

All the events come across as raw, the moments feel unfiltered, making scenes resemble more of a vlog you would find on someone's YouTube channel rather than a traditional movie meant for theaters and home entertainment.

However, it falls short in all other facets.

There's lack of real tension, screenplay is pretty bland, and it misses that sense of stakes and intensity. Plus, I just didn't feel invested in the characters or the journeys they had to take.