Parasite. Saltburn. Ready or Not. Triangle of Sadness. The Menu. Send Help. The last few years have offered moviegoers a feast of wild and compelling eat-the-rich comedies. However, A24’s latest, How to Make a Killing, should not be counted among them.
This film’s predecessors offered scorching social commentary, scandalous twists, gross-out gags or gag-worthy gore, and dark humor so grim you might choke on your laughter. How to Make a Killing, however, is tame by comparison.
In every way, writer/director John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) has dulled the edge of the very premise, creating a dark comedy that feels less like punching up and more like a defeated shrug.
How to Make a Killing has a video game premise.
Glen Powell stars as Becket Redfellow, the firstborn son of a poised New York socialite, who should have been able to grant him every privilege — no matter how obscene — of the ultra-rich.
However, because Becket was conceived out of wedlock, his mother was disowned, forced to raise him not in the luxurious family mansion in Huntington, Long Island, but in the blue-collar setting of Bellevue, New Jersey.
In flashbacks, a young Becket is educated by his mother in the hobbies of the hobnobbing elite, like archery, and told that he is still in the will, so one day the Redfellow fortune could be his. So, naturally, when his childhood crush resurfaces as a femme fatale (Margaret Qualley), tempting him to join high society no matter the cost, Becket gets to offing his estranged relatives.
This has the vibes of a video game at first, where he stalks a douchey Wall Street broker (Raff Law) to his yacht, then a Bushwick trustafarian (Zach Woods) to his rooftop darkroom, then a two-faced televangelist (Topher Grace) to the office of his megachurch. With each successful murder, Becket is one step closer to the big boss, his ornery grandfather Whitelaw Redfellow (Ed Harris, bringing Love Lies Bleeding menace to a higher social class).
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However, where Qualley’s Waspy seductress is the devil on his shoulder, an angel appears in Jessica Henwick, who plays an aspiring high school teacher named Ruth, who is proud of her “small dreams.” Which woman — and thereby which path — will Becket choose? It’s not as fun as it should be to find out.
Glen Powell is miscast in How to Make a Killing.
As in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man remake, this strong-jawed leading man with brilliantly white, straight teeth is cast as a working-class everyman, put-upon by a wealthy ruling class that scoffs at his suffering. However, Powell doesn’t look working class, no matter how he might muss his hair.
Becket was supposed to be born into a life of privilege, so you could argue him looking the part is the point. OK. But the other problem is, Powell is just not as funny as the supporting players around him. Law is channeling The Wolf of Wall Street slapstick as a finance bro with no self-awareness. Woods is sharply comedic as a self-important photographer with more money than vision. Grace, who looks jarring with a deep spray tan and a litter of tattoos, is unnervingly amusing as a modern pastor whose true passion is scamming. Add to that Bill Camp (Drive-Away Dolls) as a self-loathing uncle and Qualley as an over-the-top vamp, and you have a stellar supporting cast priming Powell for punchlines. And he can’t land a one. (No offense to Henwick. She’s cast to play a one-note good girl, so she gets nothing in the way of jokes.)
Powell’s playing an underdog, but he has the suavity of a leading man. And as Ford’s thriller trudges into its climactic showdown, I was frustrated to realize I didn’t feel invested in Becket’s journey because he didn’t feel remotely real to me. While everyone else had built characters kooky, bold, and — even if thinly written — defined, Powell’s revenge killer struck me as bland, despite his murder spree.
How to Make a Killing falls short of shocking, surprising, or fun.
Ford conceives of unexpected ways to kill the first couple of cousins. However, for those seeking gruesome spectacle, as is common for eat-the-rich comedies, you’ll be let down by how often the deaths happen out of frame. There’s nothing as heart-stopping as the climax of Parasite‘s party, or as gross as Triangle of Sadness‘s vomit fest, or as satisfying as the gloppy explosions in Ready or Not. And Ford certainly doesn’t genre-bend as effectively as Sam Raimi does with Send Help.
For those hoping for a thrilling cat-and-mouse game with the FBI agents who turn up after the second murder, you’ll be frustrated by how the authorities are painted as both outrageously incompetent and, abruptly, incredibly competent, depending on the needs of the plot.
How to Make a Killing isn’t shocking in its violence, but it is bold in its gaping plot holes. For a movie so fixated on how its anti-hero aims to get away with murder, it’s wild to ignore typical evidence, like DNA, as a plot point.
But most frustrating of all is how How to Make a Killing offers neither political satire nor cheap thrills, delivering a tedious cautionary tale about the pursuit of money at all costs. All the other comedies I mentioned use their twisted tales to not only entertain but also urge their audience to consider how class conflict and wealth inequality impacts them and their world. How to Make A Killing offers a story that feels bound by Hays Code conventions, antiquated guidelines for Hollywood movies intended to keep them from being too subversive or controversial. While that code fell out of fashion in the 1960s, it’s alarming to see in 2026 a movie from A24, the groundbreaking studio behind such superb cinema as Lady Bird, Moonlight, The Florida Project, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, deliver an eat-the-rich comedy so tame.
How to Make a Killing opens in theaters on Feb. 20.
