Parents hire loser to kidnap daughter away from dangerous cult
Faults, like The Guest, is an unrecognized New American Classic, overlooked and unheralded because it lacked a faux-indie marketing campaign or appropriately sober and restrained subject matter (as compared to something safe and really shitty, like, say Foxcatcher). Director/writer Riley Stearns’s wonderful, eccentric dark comedy follows a cult expert (the spectacular Leland Orser) hired by desperate parents to kidnap their daughter (an equally impressive Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a member of a mysterious cult known as Faults, and deprogram her. That’s fertile ground for a fascinating story, but one of Faults’ biggest strengths is its out-of-left-field unpredictability and oddness.
Faults is primarily a wonderful character study – Leland’s Ansel is one of the most broken-down and self-hating characters in recent years, yet he remains human and endearing, and we care deeply about what will become of him and Winstead’s Claire. Stearn handles the material with the sardonic wit and nihilistic spirit of the Coen brothers, and his only misstep is an ending that robs the film of an ambiguity that heightens the cryptic spell it casts over viewers.
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