One of the best moments of Dave Franco’s directorial debut The Rental comes early, in the first scene, no less. Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (Sheila Vand), huddled over a computer, scan through pictures of a beautiful and expensive house on the top of some craggy cliffs overlooking the ocean. Mina intimately drapes her arms over Charlie’s shoulders, and leans in to look at the rental property. It’s expensive and opulent, but they deserve it, Mina says.

“And look at that fucking coastline!”

Their closeness and intimacy is charming, so it’s a slight shock when Charlie’s brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White) enters with a “am I interrupting?” and kisses Mina. It turns out Charlie and Mina are just coworkers who just finished some big project and want to celebrate at the rental property with their significant others...but their sexual tension is palpable. It’s such an interesting moment that clues in canny viewers that tension is already bubbling under the surface. More importantly, it inverts expectations in ways that continue throughout the film.

That night as Charlie gets ready for bed, we’re quickly introduced to the final member of our foursome in Charlie’s wife Michelle (Alison Brie), who is surprised she’s looking forward to a weekend away with Charlie’s brother. She’d pretty much gave up on him although, she says, it seems like Mina woke him up. Charlie isn’t convinced and dismissively argues that he doesn’t understand how Josh managed to snag Mina. She’s the whole package while Josh is, in Charlie’s own words, a “barely employed Lyft driver” who was kicked out of college and served jail time for beating a man to a pulp outside of his frat house. But we also get a brief glimpse into Josh and Mina’s relationship and playful intimacy as she pops a pimple on his back and tries to wipe it on him.

With so much emotional baggage (and a dog at a “no pets allowed” rental), the foursome heads out to the rental property. In the car, Mina shows her Airbnb profile to the group and wonders why her application to rent the place was denied while Charlie’s was approved an hour later. Could it be her last name Mohammadi? Are they heading into racist territory? While the brothers get into an argument about whether the renter is racist, Mina sits quickly in the backseat, staring out the window. It’s a refrain that’s obviously been repeated and the subtle way she dips out of the conversation while the white boys argue is telling.

Things don’t improve at the property when they meet Taylor (Toby Huss), the renter, who immediately and pointedly asks Mina, “how did you get mixed up with this family?” before responding with, “I didn’t mean anything by it,” when confronted by Mina. But after a quick walkthrough, Taylor leaves uncomfortably and awhile later, Michelle breaks out the Ecstasy.

Ecstasy leads to dancing which leads to Charlie and Mina, alone in the hot tub while their significant others are passed out. And after some playful repositioning to share the tub’s pressure jets, the opening scene is paid off with a kiss. Which leads to sex in the shower.

While all of this relationship drama and backstabbing plays out, subtle hints that something else is going on start to emerge. Why does Michelle find soot on her bed? And what’s with the POV shots of someone breathing heavily while watching the various couples from afar? Infidelity might not be the most dangerous part of the weekend…

The Rental is weird in that, on first watch, it feels like two separate movies. On one side, there’s the heavy relationship drama that’s kicked into overdrive as revelations come to the surface and boundaries are tested. Then there’s the genre trappings which emerge imperceptibly slowly over the first forty five minutes before finally kicking into overdrive and changing the film’s dynamics.

On second watch, though, I found myself appreciating the way director David Franco parses out mysterious moments at a leisurely pace. From the potentially racist property owner who just drops by and lets himself in announced--“You guys don’t find this creepy at all?” Mina asks--to a padlocked door under the deck--“Creepy door with an electronic code. That’s great”--the script by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg takes a kind of sadistic pleasure in slowly tormenting the renters.

What really helps sell The Rental are the actors, who elevate the sometimes standard genre portions. Dan Stevens, ever so mercurial, is fantastic as the charming Charlie. The brother who got the smarts and the charms in the family, he stands in opposition to the ever-fuck-up Josh. Alison Brie, meanwhile, brings pathos to Michelle, who looks at the “friendship” between Charlie and Mina with tepid approval. “You’re cool with [Mina] occupying such a large space in your husband’s life?” Josh asks Michelle, who responds, “they have their creative thing going on...I’m glad he has someone to share that with.” But the implication hangs between them like a ticking bomb.

It’s also hard to not note that Mina, played so perfectly by Sheila Vand (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), is the only character who actually has to deal with actual problems. The microaggressions fly fast and the subtle and authentic way she plays them off--or is pressured into playing them off--is a fantastic little wrinkle. Unlike her white friends whose privilege has taught them to be completely unconcerned about the uncomfortable moments, she never truly feels safe in the house. So it only makes sense that Mina’s the first to notice what’s really going on that weekend…

A surprisingly nihilistic mean streak runs through the script and while the last third feels a bit undercooked as the film goes more in the slasher realm, the crisp direction, cinematography by Christian Sprenger and a lurking score by The Outsider composers Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans sells the horror when the internal conflict turns external with bloody precision. It’s jarring when it turns on a dime, but it also shows just how unsafe we are in the 21st century and how much we take for granted. That safety net can be stripped away so quickly. While the denouement’s revelations didn’t hit as hard as filmmakers probably wanted, they still present a creepy little jolt with The Strangers implications:

Sometimes fate doesn’t care about our puny little squabbles.