Review: The Wrath of Becky – “Fantastically furious and ferocious”

A sequel to the 2020 Summer box office hit BECKY which was released theatrically during the height of the pandemic, dominated the box office for several weeks and reintroduced America to the charms and social distancing of drive-in theaters, THE WRATH OF BECKY is exclusively in theaters on the 26th of May.

Lulu Wilson is back as Becky, the teenage ball of rage that we last saw viciously decimating a gang of neo-nazis, led by Kevin James, in 2020’s Becky. In The Wrath of Becky, the titular anti-heroine is 16 now and as pissed off as ever, abiding by what she told her dad in the first film when he said she couldn’t be angry forever: “Obviously I can”.

The Wrath of Becky swaps the original’s neo-nazi antagonists for MAGA morons, neatly mirroring how the fascists aren’t swastika-tattooed psychos anymore, they’re a clean-cut part of the political conversation because nobody will just punch a nazi in the face, Indy-style, anymore, they have to be listened to and acknowledged.

Well if that grinds anybody else’s gears, then you’ll be glad to know that Becky is here to cathartically dispatch a lot of far-right fuckers in plenty of satisfying ways.

Picking up two years after the first film, Becky is off the grid, training to be an even more lethal killing machine every day, waiting tables every night, and living with an elderly blind woman and her dog Diego. When she gets on the wrong side of some Noble Men (code for Proud Boys) who come into her restaurant and are in town to disrupt the rally of an AOC-alike senator, they kill her friend and her pooch and Becky vows revenge.

Flipping the script of the first film, The Wrath of Becky sees Becky not under siege, but laying siege, and not having to use the contents of her pencil case to kill the baddies, but having access to an actual arsenal of real weapons. The Noble Men, led by Seann ‘Stifler’ William Scott, are holed up in a lake-side cabin and Becky uses her smarts and a host of savage takes on Home Alone-esque booby traps to off them one by one.

Lulu Wilson is as fantastically furious and ferocious as Becky as before, but the extra years of life experience and training make this take on Becky even cannier and more fun, evolving her from a scared and dangerous girl to a grown-up angel of death. Like Kevin James in the first film, Seann William Scott is clearly relishing being evil and provides significant creepy menace, although his psycho performance won’t be quite as surprising for anyone who saw 2018’s Bloodline.

While there are a few more moments of comedy than before that are regrettably a bit cringe, writer-director Matt Angel, with co-director Suzanne Coote, runs a lean and tight ship not bogging the film down with unnecessary extra lore, keeping everything always moving, giving us all the kills and gore we want, and projecting the character forward for what we would be a very cool third film. For uber-Becky fans, yes, she still has that key too…

Skip to the end:
Rad and righteous, Wrath of Becky rules!

TW:
Some mild dog torture.

The Wrath of Becky is released exclusively in theaters on the 26th of May.