Here’s a mean-spirited little bitch of a film that makes you wonder how much the director dislikes his kinfolk. First off, it’s impossible not to be repulsed by the premise — a set of middle-aged losers attempt to win the fortune of a dying aunt they all loathe. Has any of you people actually attempted fortune hunting? While I cannot say I’ve ever given it a whirl, I can tell you two sure things about attempting such and neither will help you out here: people rarely die on schedule and estate stuff takes FOREVER. All y’all wanting to be: “hi granny, always loved you, where’s my money?” are going to be waiting quite some time even if you are successful. Oh, and that’s assuming there are no challenges to the will or that any last second revisions will be heeded and notarized. I couldn’t get my aunt last year to doctor’s appointment. Seriously. I planned several. I coordinated with doctors and assistants and Uber drivers and nursing home staffs and I still couldn’t get her to a doctor – despite the clear and immediate need.
Now how you gonna coordinate a last minute change of will, you buzzards? Never mind.
A film appealing to the worst in all of us. The Estate focuses on the last days of Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner), an awful woman dying of … something convenient. By “convenient” I mean little mess is involved and the future corpse remains both ambulatory and in control of her faculties. If that seems rare in someone old dying of cancer it’s only because it is.
When word gets out, the losers show up in full force. The two we “root” for are sisters Macey (Toni Collette) and Savannah (Anna Faris). The inside track is held by their cousin, snotty Beatrice (Rosemary DeWitt), and her husband James (Ron Livingston), but slimy cousin Richard (David Duchovny) also shows up for good measure. Let me be clear here: nobody else is at this mansion besides Shrew and the Gold-Diggers (my fav 1980s alternate rock band).
Back up. Now if you haven’t been through this, you may be forgiven. Myself? I’ve had a few end-of-life experiences in my recent past, sad-to-say, and my general impression here is GTFO. You have an older woman dying of cancer. OK, that happens. But she’s not in a hospital, nor a rehab center, nor a hospice, nor a care facility of any kind. Well, sure, she’s got the resources, she can hospice from home … so where’s her hospice nurse? Who is taking care of her? Even the gold-diggers have to sign something claiming medical responsibility, don’t they? Rich Americans don’t die slowly at home by themselves. No, they don’t.
So a film that clearly researched nothing went out of its way to pit a horrible woman against her soon-to-be cloying and obsequious kin. This is an awful premise only softened by the fact that I got to trot the words “cloying” and “obsequious” out of the stable; they don’t get a lot of work on my track. And the film follows awful suit, asking disingenuous human slimeballs to compete against one another to see whom exactly can suck the most. The pinnacle of this wretched behavior is when Macey and Savannah 
decide auntie needs to get laid … and her cousins start competing to find Aunt Hilda a f***boi. SMH.
David Duchovny is the only one who seems to be having fun in this film, fully embracing his awful as the cousin who is not only a fortune-hunter but one who actively attempts to bed his other cousins. To be fair, I did laugh a bit at his antics. What didn’t make me laugh was the part where the f***boi target turns out to be a register sex offender, and –as if that were not bad enough—when Aunt Hilda goes for the man, threatening the fortune in question, the gang rally to entrap the poor bastard.
Fantastic, movie. You have me rooting for a registered sex offender. Bravo. Brav-o. I mean, seriously, you’ve outdone yourself. This film is so bad and these characters so depraved and miserable that I would rather the convicted sex offender return quietly back to his original life than indulge any more of this nonsense.
The Estate did make me laugh a few times, so I can’t call it “the worst of the worst.” But I’m sure not gonna call it anything other than “awful.” Shame on all of you. Toni Collette, WTF? You are [read: were] as reliable as actors get. What happened here?
There once was an heiress named Hilda
Whose countenance was much less than fulfilled-a
So her kin all flocked by
But they didn’t say why
They just wanted a part of the will, duh
Rated R, 96 Minutes
Director: Dean Craig
Writer: Dean Criag
Genre: Why? Why? Why?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Fortune-hunters?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Irascible oldsters
