‘Inheritance’ is a sharp thriller- shot with an iPhone

Phoebe Dynevor is a plausible action hero in this thriller, which has a familiar plot but a unique look.

When it comes to shooting an entire film with an iPhone, the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary Searching For Sugar Man was completed using a relatively prehistoric version of an iPhone app, after the filmmakers ran out of money and could no longer afford standard equipment.

For iPhone-shot feature films, Sean Baker was the pioneer, using the iPhone to shoot his 2015 indie sleeper Tangerine and breaking out the phone again to shoot the Disney World climax of his later film The Florida Project.

Steven Soderbergh did the same thing in 2018, with Unsane – (see my interview with actor Joshua Leonard, telling some stories from the set) — and again the following year with the outstanding High-Flying Bird, the only basketball movie set entirely during a lockout.

Since then, though, Soderbergh and Baker have both returned to more traditional film equipment. And even though each year’s iPhone is better than the one the year before, not many major filmmakers have been making all-iPhone films, although the upcoming 28 Years Later reportedly used an iPhone 15 Pro Max for some scenes.

Now, we have Inheritance, a mostly successful action movie directed by Neil Burger, which was shot entirely with an iPhone.

I’m guessing there were rigs, enhancements, and special lighting setups involved, but the iPhone was the main camera- and most scenes appear to have been shot with single-camera set-ups and the phone swiveling back and forth. But I found this considerably less annoying than I normally do.

Burger is something of a journeyman, having made quite a few movies — like The Illusionist, Limitless, Divergent, and Voyagers — that you probably sort of remember but probably don’t especially adore. But this is better than most of those.

The film stars Phoebe Dynevor, the English actress best known for Bridgerton, as Maya, an American woman whose mother dies, leading her to depression. Soon, her long-estranged father (Rhys Ifans) resurfaces, and she learns that he has a second life as an international man of mystery, and possibly an arms dealer and spy.

A novice when it comes to any kind of international intrigue, Maya gets pulled into a fairly traditional spy plot involving bad guys who are looking for a specific MacGuffin. She also has to figure out who her father really is, and whether he’s telling the truth about what he claims.

And it’s a true globe-trotting thriller, shot on location in Cairo, New Delhi and Seoul, as the lack of having to use traditional cameras likely opened up some budget space for travel.

Dynevor also starred in Fair Play, a psychological drama that was for some reason falsely marketed as a sexy thriller, and I’ve never been all that impressed with her non-Bridgerton work. But she more than holds her own here, as does Ifans, who in middle age has really become an interesting actor.

Inheritance, by the way, is not to be confused with The Inheritance, the 2024 horror film, or Inheritance, the 2020 thriller about a wealthy and greedy family, or Inheritance, a different thriller, this one from 2017. I liked the new Inheritance plenty, but it could have perhaps used a less generic title.