The Rental is in a long-existing but suddenly bourgeoning sub-genre of thriller/suspense/horror that basically suggests staycations are for the best. The kind of movie that says, “hey, you know that cute B&B / house on the beach / rental in Scotland? Let’s not rent that.” I guess a latent anxiety that someone running an Airbnb is out to kill you.

The Rental is just that movie. Four fairly average and uninteresting types rent a seaside house for the weekend, fuddle about a bit, and wind up entrapped in some kind of insidious plot.

Biggest problem with this failure of a movie is that the four leads are just not that interesting, they just aren’t horrible enough, and they just aren’t worth rooting for. They are pretty average people who do some bad stuff but it’s never interesting enough to want some psycho killer to come get them or whatever it is this movie was trying to setup. And the worst thing is, while a lot of nothing is happening in the first half, it’s actually more interesting than the allegedly suspenseful second. Because there’s nothing unique or interesting going on in that second half.

Skip this one… there are better (though honestly not by much) other recent examples in this random subgenre of modern anxiety. This one does nothing new or unique or interesting.

Score: 64