The Inheritance is a strong, unsettling short that explores the challenges mixed-race couples face as they delve into their ancestors’ past. Destinee Stewart keeps her audience uncomfortable throughout the fifteen-minute runtime.

When Venus (Arie Thompson) joins her wife Harley (Hetty Abbott) on a remote family estate, unsettling visions collapse past and present. As the house tightens its grip on the couple, she is drawn into a buried history that begins to fracture her marriage and unravel her sense of self.

Venus is a musician who has recently gone through some racist trauma that has affected her career. So what better than going to an old house that almost certainly has a past that isn’t positive with your wife? In The Inheritance, director Destinee Stewart poses a question we have seen in several other films: how do mixed-race relationships handle what their ancestors did? Only in this iteration of that story are we presented with a female same-sex relationship.

Sadly, that isn’t fully fleshed out in this film and is mostly only brought up in little moments for our characters to react to. If there had been more runtime for The Inheritance, it would have been interesting to see how that was tackled, as it is a story that could be rich from a dramatic standpoint and even in a horror format, considering how this film goes down. It does feel like it is the only thing missing that would truly elevate it. Despite that, this is still a very good short film from Stewart, one that, from a horror standpoint, does everything right to unnerve you.

While a little trigger-happy on the jump scare music cues, The Inheritance still packs a decent amount of scares into its fifteen-minute runtime. The sense of looming dread that fills the film is impressive. You really are dreading the climax. Even though we have a fair idea of where the film is heading. Stewart is still able to make us dread the journey.

When we get to the climax of The Inheritance, Stewart opts for clever visuals with Senda Bonnet’s camera: instead of staying on Venus struggling, we see her legs; we see how hard she is fighting to stop whatever has possessed Harley. Equally, we don’t focus on Harley in this scene other than through Venus’ own POV. There are also some nice touches from Bonnet; in the living room scene, we view everything from a low-angle perspective as if we are seeing the couple interacting from the basement where some secrets are revealed. It enhances that unsettling atmosphere that Stewart makes sure is rife throughout the film.

Arie Thompson is great as the strong-willed Venus; she brings a sense of surety to the character that lets us believe she wouldn’t let everything that has happened to her take over her life forever. She moves forward. Sadly, for her, she just tried to move forward in the worst house imaginable. Thompson brings a lot to the role, and we get why she would be inquisitive and not want to get out of that property. Equally, Abbott does good work as the at-first supportive Harley. Her shift from a seemingly positive character to a stoic one is great. You buy into the duo as a couple. So, when we get to the finale, and those finale seconds, your heart breaks for them as you are not sure how on earth they can recover from such an incident.

Stewart’s decision in The Inheritance to finish the film where she does is excellent. There is no happy ending; things are not tied up in a neat bow; we get the ending of a traumatic incident and can only guess where the characters go next.

★★★ 1/2

Support Us

I am but a small website in this big, wide world. As much as I would love to make this website a big and wonderful entity. That would bring in more costs. So, for now, all I hope is to make Upcoming On Screen self-sufficient. Well, enough to make any website fees less of a worry for me in the future. You can support the website below…

Patreon

You can support us in a variety of ways (other than that wonderful word of mouth) and those lovely follows. If you are so inclined to help us out, then you can support us via Patreon, find our link here!. We don’t want to ask you much, so for now, we have limited our tiers to £1.50 and £3.50. These will, of course, grow the more we plan to do here at Upcoming On Screen.

Social Media

You can also support us via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Blue Sky! by giving us a follow and a like. Every single one helps!

Thanks for reading; every view helps us out more than you would think (we have fragile egos). Until next time.