Last year’s The Guest was a great movie for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that every role in the film, no matter how small, was played by a great actor who got at least a small chance to do interesting work—and one of the big highlights of that highlight-filled cast was Leland Orser playing the put-upon, casually alcoholic father. Orser’s performance was magnetic, hilarious, anxiety-inducing, and I left that film wanting to see much more from him than I’ve been getting in recent years. The producers of The Guest must have felt the same way, because now they’ve released Faults, a film from first time feature writer/director Riley Stearns that casts Orser as its lead and gives him a chance to the same sort of uncomfortably hilarious things that he was doing for them there.
This time around Orser is playing a character named Ansel Roth, a man who purports to be one of the world’s leading experts on mind-control, but whose credibility is clearly in question because when we meet him he’s stuck doing pathetically small time speaking engagements set up at chain hotels that are meant to hawk a book he wrote that nobody is reading. If things were ever going well for the guy, they aren’t going well anymore, to the point where he’s been reduced to trying to scam free meals from hapless restaurant employees. An opportunity to make some quick cash and pay off an old debt comes when an older couple approaches him and offers to hire him to abduct and deprogram their adult daughter, Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), however. You see, she’s fallen in with a cult called Faults, and Roth has a reputation for helping people who have fallen in with exploitive religious sects. Roth takes the job and abducts the girl tout de suite, but complications occur when she proves to be a stronger mind than he anticipated, and soon they find themselves butting heads in a struggle for control.
As you may have picked up on already, the big reason to watch Faults is Orser’s performance as the down on his luck cult expert. If Roth had any dignity or self-respect at any point of his life, he’s been sucked dry of it over time, and that unique ability Orser has to let pain register on his face and then slowly amplify until it’s out of control (remember his small appearance in Se7en?) is the perfect tool to convey to an audience how hard he has hit bottom. Roth is pathetic, an open wound of raw vulnerability, but he has just enough ego left to bluster at the suggestion that he’s not still in control, so his struggling with accepting the disparity between his perception of reality and the reality of reality provides fodder for Orser to make some really interesting acting choices—and once he has to start dealing with the mysterious and alluring Claire while in this conflicted state, things get even more fascinating to watch.
Which brings us to the other big reason to check out this movie: the fact that Winstead makes for such an incredible foil for Orser. Even while she’s playing a character who is confused enough to have joined a cult and who has recently been through the disorienting experience of being abducted from that cult by masked men, she remains absolutely committed to projecting an air of deep focus. Not only does this approach make for an interesting contrast to Orser’s constant emotional outbursts and breakdowns, Winstead is so damned believable pulling the fanatic thing off that it also gets downright unnerving to be stuck in a room with her. She doesn’t get as much to do as Orser here, but without somebody as good as her there for him to bounce off of, this movie wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as it is.
Much like The Guest, Faults is a movie that’s made better by its supporting cast. In addition to Orser and Winstead anchoring the film with top notch lead performances, the film also features a small but memorable cast of side characters who are brought to life by equally talented character actors. Beth Grant and Chris Ellis play Claire’s parents, and they’re playing to type, but they’re both so good at playing their types that there’s no surprise how much personality they’re able to bring to the film, even with limited screen time. Lance Reddick gets even less time as a debt collector, but his screen presence brings with it so much gravity that just the sight of him showing up on the screen is enough to convince you that the stakes behind Roth’s debts are serious and life-threatening. The guy who steals the movie out from under absolutely everyone is Jon Gries though. He play’s Roth’s vaguely effeminate and vaguely Southern Baptist but nonetheless easy to anger manager. What he’s doing here is so unique that it’s hard to even put into words, but watching him chew scenery and go big with his performance, while still completely convincing you of the reality of his character, is near magical.
Faults isn’t a big or flashy movie—the bulk of it takes place in one shoddy-looking hotel room—but it’s definitely got enough going on in it to hold your attention. It creates memorable characters who are made even more memorable because they’re being played by the perfect actors, and it tells a story that’s tense and mysterious while at the same time being darkly humorous and semi-ridiculous. It throws a couple of curve balls at you and it gives you a couple existential quandaries to chew on after the end credits roll, and generally it’s just the sort of movie that you find yourself happy to have spent your time on after it’s over. If enough people end up getting the chance to see it, there should be quite a bit of built-in interest for whatever project Stearns chooses to helm next.
