Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
Plot: The plot revolves around a girl who has been badly beaten up. Much is caught on camera and someone takes the blame quickly, but it all feels off somehow. And, of course, it is.
Review: Set in Italy, Security revolves around a small but affluent holiday town, a place where wealthy folks would have a second vacation home (think Martha’s Vineyard or The Hamptons). This means most of the owners aren’t around all year so their homes are protected by security systems and cameras, which is where our story begins.
A young woman, bloody and beaten, is seen on multiple home cameras wandering from house to house as she tries to seek help. With no one at the houses to answer she’s eventually picked up by the police who immediately arrest her drunk of a father for her assault. Her father has a criminal record and he’s also pleaded guilty to the crime. But what seems like a straightforward case of domestic abuse may be anything but when our protagonist Roberto (Marco D’Amore), head of security for the town, starts digging through the camera footage.
As foreign language thrillers go, this one is surprisingly straightforward. I’ve watched my share of these so I went into Security hoping for something a bit more off the beaten path. That’s not to say the movie is a bad one; it’s just that I was expecting more.
The story itself is all about how we perceive security. People feel safest at home—or at least most people do—and with cameras existing almost everywhere in the modern world there’s also the comfort (or paranoia, depending on your point of view) of knowing someone is always watching. But cameras alone don’t tell the whole story, and what we see isn’t always the whole truth. Director and screenplay writer Peter Chelsom does a great job of exploring both sides of this particular coin.
And for a movie that’s nearly two hours long, I never felt bored while watching it. The film also touches on the dangers or downsides of accepting everything we see on social media or the news as fact. Sometimes what we think we’ve seen isn’t actually what happened, and it’s easier for some people to accept this and look no further rather than dig deeper, especially if it means it makes their lives easier.
It’s ironic then that Security doesn’t have much to offer in terms of depth or substance. All of the characters here are one-note and lacking any real charisma to draw you in. Secrets are revealed but are predictable as hell, and by the end I felt like I had watch the first draft of a story that could’ve been much more interesting if they had bothered to add more layers to the characters and to the story itself.
It’s the kind of movie that would’ve seemed more interesting if it came out ten years ago, but with so many more suspenseful thrillers out there this one falls squarely in the average pile for me.
Sommer’s Score: 5 out of 10
You can check out more thrilling content below:
Netflix’s Below Zero is a Taut Spanish Thriller
Spanish Mystery Thriller Series ‘Who Killed Sara?’ Season 1 & 2 Review
Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes.
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