ABC Film Challenge – Thriller – I – Inconceivable (2017) Movie Review
Director: Jonathan Baker
Writer: Chloe King (Screenplay)
Starring: Gina Gershon, Nicky Whelan, Nicolas Cage, Sienna Shoh Baker, Harlow Bottarini, Natalie Eva Marie, Faye Dunaway
Plot: A mother looks to escape her abusive past by moving to a new town where she befriends another mother, who grows suspicious of her.
Tagline – It’s Perfect. It’s Really Perfect.
Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Inconceivable starts as we see how Angela (Gershon) and Brian (Cage) look to start a fresh life with their young daughter Cora, it doesn’t take long before Angela meets another mother in Katie (Whelan) with the two becoming friends.
When Katie looks to move away, Angela offers Katie a chance to live in their guest house and be a part time babysitter, which will bring the friends closer, with Katie having her own reason for getting close to the family.
Thoughs on Inconceivable
Characters & Performances
Angela is a mother that has suffered from multiple miscarriages in hope of starting a family with her husband. After the first child they have, she looks to start a fresh life returning to work, trying to have a professional life. While being a mother. She loses their next child, which will see them return to a surrogate, only becoming paranoid about the person they picked. Gina Gershon does bring us the paranoid professional. One that will show the reality of her life, which could spiral out of control.
Katie is the single mother that comes into Angela’s life, being a friend at first, before taking a role as babysitter. She offers to become the surrogate for the couple, even though she has a darker motive for taking this role. Nicky Whelan gives us a great performance as a woman who knows what she wants, even if it crosses the line, without going full psychotic.
Brian is the husband of Angela’s he has wanted a son for years, but isn’t going to push his wife through the pain to make it happen. He is always supporting her through her best and worst days, just a general nice husband character. Nicolas Cage is strange in this role because he is mostly just normal. He feels like too big of a star to be playing such an ordinary role.
Story
The story here follows a couple that are looking to have a second child, turning to a newly found friend to become the surrogate. Only for her to have much more sinister reason for coming into their lives. When you look into this story, we do get to go down the path that motherhood can make people do crazy things. Drive people over the edge with what they want, even if it is done in a more subtle way here. Everything we see comes off very calm, it never feels intense like you would imagine it to be. We only get a couple of shouting parts, but even if you were slightly suspicious, you wouldn’t do some of the things Angela does in the film.
Themes – Inconceivable is a thriller that never hints the intensity other movies tackling the same subjects have, is uses the luxury home to show how Katie gets into the life, but never ends up making us feel like we are seeing the controlling side happen.
Inconceivable is a thriller that never gets to the intensity it deserves, with the calm approach leading to a story that feels like a soap opera.
