In a luxurious seaside villa, a modest young woman finds herself in the company of a strange family — an unknown and wealthy father, his extravagant wife, his daughter, an ambitious woman, a rebellious teenager, and their creepy maid. Someone is lying. Between suspicions and lies, a mystery grows and the evil spreads. Part golden age Chabrolian thriller and partly indebted to recent powerhouses like KNIVES OUT and Succession, this delightfully twisted queering of the genre is a darkly clever film entirely its own.
“Marnier’s film manages to be cruelly funny, while evoking the spirit of that master of the French thriller Claude Chabrol, with hints of Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell.” —Jonathan Romney, The Guardian “It quickly becomes apparent that nothing is quite as it seems in this jaunty romp. Marnier’s agile screenplay takes us beyond surface appearances to reveal the hidden agendas at play. Propelled by revelations, twists and a seasoning of sly humour… The clever machinations of the plot are always underpinned by a strong ensemble cast playing the emotional truth of the situations to the hilt.” —Allan Hunter, Screendaily “Expertly calibrated… If THE ORIGIN OF EVIL were only lurid camp it would pall fairly quickly, but Marnier is careful to weave a fine vein of pathos through this narrative… THE ORIGIN OF EVIL’s wicked ways hit home with all the more jouissance for being deceptively anchored in the real.” —Caspar Salmon, BFI Sight & Sound
