Reptile (Netflix, 2023)
The great Benicio del Toro gives one of his more brooding, intense performances in the psychological thriller Reptile.
It’s the debut feature from director Grant Singer, who made a name for himself as a video maker for some of the biggest names in pop music, like The Weeknd, Lorde and Sam Smith.
Singer is working from a script he co-wrote with Benjamin Brewer and with Del Toro himself.
It concerns a tough New England police detective, Tom Nichols (Del Toro), who tries to figure out who committed the murder of Summer Elswick (Matilda Lutz), a realtor who was brutally stabbed to death in a house she was trying to sell.
It’s a classic set-up for a murder mystery slash police procedural, and as long as the movie remembers that it’s absolutely fine.
There’s a long list of suspects, from boyfriend Will (Justin Timberlake), also a real estate agent, to Summer’s (almost) ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman), but also including everyone else, because people can be in cahoots, and you never know about the police force either. And besides, any movie that’s got Michael Pitt (Murder by Numbers) as a creepy weirdo… well, that’s a prime suspect right there.
It’s a guessing game that the filmmakers play quite well, at least for a while, but that’s fine too, because there are other things that also demand attention. Like Del Toro’s performance, whose magnificent face is often in centre frame, almost a movie in itself.
Nichols is a man who is slowly coming to realize that the job he loves, doesn’t love him back, even as it seems like he’s finally solving the case. His great love Judy is played by Alicia Silverstone (Clueless), who has only gotten better with age.
I’m sure people will complain about Timberlake, but there is a meekness to Will’s character that he does quite well.
If there’s a problem, it’s that this kind of movie can invite a certain pretentiousness (like an unnecessary dream sequence) when there’s nothing wrong with being ‘just’ a solid genre film.
Singer seems influenced by the likes of David Fincher and Denis Villeneuve, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but at some points he may be overdoing it a bit, even if Reptile is still an appropriately gloomy, and dare I say it, enjoyable affair.