Following the horror film Hokum, Adam Scott turns up in another genre entry premiering at this week’s SXSW Film Festival in Texas. The smartest thing about The Saviors is its uncanny timeliness about growing suspicions of Middle Easterners in a divided Trump era and increasingly racist America. And as told through the eyes of Scott’s white liberal Sean Harrison, his Black wife Kim (Danielle Deadwyler) and his leftist sister Cleon (Kate Berlant), The Saviors finds itself firmly planted in the kind of paranoid-thriller format popular in such ’70s classics as The Parallax View and The Conversation but also adding some satirical comedic touches that work nicely — until they don’t. We will get to that in a bit.
Sean and Kim Harrison have decided to divorce but need the money to pay off the mortgage, so they are renting out their garage as an Airbnb to a seemingly nice and innocent brother and sister from the Middle East, Jahan (Theo) and his deaf siibling Amir (Nazanin Boniadi). So far so good, but liberal as he may think he is, Sean also is a bit of a conspiracy theorist whose weird dreams sometimes take on real-life concern. In pure Hitchcock fashion he starts to notice things amiss, strange goings on at the Airbnb, lights on and off, weird noise, a dog taken inside and disappearing, a security map for a nearby facility the U.S. president is set to visit later in the week and other things including Kim’s missing journal. The latter’s disappearance is a key thing that turns her initial skepticism about her soon-to-be ex-husband’s suspicions and ramblings into possible truth. She’s on board.
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Add in a family dinner scene at the home of Sean’s parents (Ron Perlman and Colleen Camp) with their grown children Sean and sister Cleo (Kate Berlant), where we learn mom and dad are fans of right-wing propaganda that they try to push on the kids by way of a neo-Nazi-style brochure, and more intrigue is laid into the plot. That brochure serves as kind of a MacGuffin that will figure later, but meanwhile, after this detour the story intensifies as both Sean and Kim now are on the case — even while having sex, believe it or not — along with a private investigator (Greg Kinnear) Kim has brought in. They want him to confirm and take to authorities their suspicions that this pair of siblings from the Middle East just might be a sleeper cell ready to strike their target in America, that being the president.
OK, with Kinnear’s over-the-top PI and the rather awkward attempts to infiltrate their tenants’ room, the film at times feels a little more like the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Mystery Hour, than Three Days of the Condor, the kind of thriller I believe director Kevin Hamedani and his co-writer Travis Betz had in mind. Still it is fun to watch, and with the U.S. going to war with Iran just as its SXSW debut takes place, you can call me paranoid, but it looks like it was all somehow planned. This is a movie that plays off the suspicions we all have about one another in this divided world. No matter what we try to tell ourselves about our own goodness and understanding, it is getting increasingly difficult to find the real truth, and easier to separate ourselves from it. Without divulging too much, you can expect a couple of nifty twists along the way that confirm we are all living in a f*cked-up world of distrust and misinformation, a recipe for disaster.
Scott’s casting is perfect as he convincingly plays the everyman so effectively again. Deadwyler is a nice complement, as is the bright light Berlant. Keeping it all real, though, is Rossi, underplaying and right on the money as the stable Middle Eastern brother whose presence mostly grounds all of this in reality.
Hamedani, who draws from his own life experiences in shaping this tale, does struggle with tone as the film falls prey to some silliness toward the end. I was never sure if he means this to be more comedic than thriller, but still I had a pretty good time, even if it could have been so much more.
Producers are Dan Gedman, Matt Smith, Nicholas Weinstock, Divya D’Souza, Adam Scott, Naomi Scott,
Michael Helfant, Bradley Gallo.
Title: The Saviors
Festival: SXSW (Narrative Spotlight)
Director: Kevin Hamedani
Screenwriters: Kevin Hamedani and Travis Betz
Cast: Adam Scott, Danielle Deadwyler, Theo Rossi, Kate Berlant, Nazanin Boniadi, Daveed Diggs,
Ron Perlman, Colleen Camp, Greg Kinnear
Running time: 1 hr 30 mins
Sales agents: UTA, CAA
English (US) ·