film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

wrath-becky.png

'The Wrath of Becky' Trades Kevin James as a Nazi for Sean William Scott as a Racist

By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 17, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | March 17, 2023 |


wrath-becky.png

I daresay that most people have never heard of Becky, despite the fact that it was number one at the box office for two weeks (and three out of four weeks). Alas, those weeks came three months into the pandemic, all of those receipts came from drive-in theaters, and while it might have been one of the most successful movies of the summer of 2020, it only earned $1 million.

I suspect it did considerably better with its digital release, particularly when we were starved for entertainment, so starved that the idea of Kevin James as a Nazi sounded wildly appealing. The film was fun, mostly because we got to watch a tween, Becky (Lulu Wilson), violently kill Kevin James as a Nazi and all his Nazi friends. It was probably the most satisfying film that summer, not that the competition was fierce.

Cut to three years later, and lo and behold, there’s a sequel to the Kevin-James-as-a-Nazi film starring Sean William Scott as a white supremacist. Lulu Wilson returns as teenage John Wick, although the creative team behind the original has been replaced by Suzanne Coot and Matt Angel, who wrote and directed the sequel (and Angel also stars). The sequel picks up two years after the original — which featured the murder of Becky’s father — and sees Becky bouncing from foster home to foster home until she lands with a sweet older lady, Elena (Denise Burse).

Becky also works at a diner, and when some racist, sexist assholes — members of the Noble Men — come into the restaurant and bully her, Becky “accidentally” spills coffee on the lead henchman, Sean (Matt Angel). Because they are small men who do not like being humiliated by girls, they ultimately follow Becky back to her place. A confrontation ensues, the sweet old lady is killed, Becky’s dog is injured and taken captive, and Becky has a brand new excuse to murder some fascists.

And murder she does! The trail takes her to the home of Darryl (Sean William Scott), the leader of the Noble Men, who is plotting along with the other white supremacists to murder Senator Hernandez (Gabriella Piazza).

The tone of the sequel is more cartoonish than the original — the lighting is brighter and the blood is redder — but it’s no less satisfying. Like the original, there’s not much to it: It spends 45 minutes setting up the dominos, and then it spends another 45 minutes murdering the dominos in their faces. Becky sets up around the perimeter of the house, and she kills assholes until there are no more assholes to kill, and then there is a weird twist in the end that sets up another potential sequel.

These movies are probably cheap to make, they probably bring in a nice ROI, bigots get killed, blood is creatively shed, and Lulu Wilson continues to extend her career along with B-stars on the downsides of their career. It’s a win for everyone, really.

The Wrath of Becky premiered at the 2023 SXSW Film & TV Festival.