[Review] The Estate is a Delightfully Queer and Camp Erotic Thriller

When I was a closeted gay boy in the 90s, I would troll the thriller section, admiring the VHS covers that had illicit pictures of women in various sexual poses. From Jade to Body Chemistry to Night Eyes and Illicit Dreams, the covers suggested sex mixed with threats of violence. And I would secretly rent them when I was able to and watch them in my room, hoping for a smidge of male nudity or something to titillate my hidden queer sensibilities. 90s Terry would have loved The Estate. It’s not that it’s particularly brazen with its nudity. Nor does it include the kinds of softcore sexuality that some of the 90s thrillers dabbled with. But it’s a queer psychosexual thriller with a huge dose of camp and parody that had me laughing at the absurdity of it all. 

It also has Eliza Coupe begging her stepson to go “dumpster diving for dick.” 

That’s actually how The Estate opens, as Eliza’s Lux and Chris Baker’s George stand on their own private balconies of the titular estate, bemoaning their lack of sex. “I need a guy to cum on my face,” she tells him. And so they go to a hole in the wall bar where George has a meet cute with babyfaced twunk Joe (Greg Finley) at a urinal. Joe seemingly checks out George’s package, but by the time George gets back to the table, Joe is flirting with Lux. Things escalate, the trio go back to the estate where George ends up alone in his room and Lux...well, director James Kapner stages her orgasm to a spurting fountain. 

The next morning, the stakes are set. Joe (and the audience) discover that Lux is married to George’s billionaire father Marcello (a smug Eric Roberts) and they are basically bottom-feeding off his wealth while he gallivants around the world, cheating on his wife. But the well is drying up and they are actually destitute. A conversation leads to Joe suggesting he kill Marcello and they split the billions. Turns out their dumpster diving dick is actually a hitman. From here, the script by star Chris Baker, begins to take twists and turns as the body count piles up. Along the way, Joe shows his fluid sexuality and the psychosexual war games between the trio begin.

The Estate has genre trappings of those 90s thrillers but it’s an eat-the-rich comedy at heart. The always funny Eliza Coupe is given free reign to camp and vamp it up as the young, sex-starved step mom, while Chris Baker plays more of the, ahem, comedic straight man, pining over Joe and his rippling muscles. The narrative is paced incredibly well, moving from the initial plan of murdering Marcello and then spending most of the time in the aftermath of that decision. What it lacks in the nuance and thrills that you’d expect from a thriller like this, The Estate makes up for in delightful visual jokes and its camp aesthetics. The dialogue is whipcrack and bitchy gay and Eliza eats it up. 

It’s a satire of the rich, sure, but it doesn’t have the fangs to really tear into that subject matter and instead relies on on-the-nose dialogue to deliver the well-trod criticisms. “We’re white and we’re rich. We can kill one guy,” is stated at one point. But that kind of bon mot is about as savage as it gets. The erotic part is also unfortunately muted, with most of the steaminess intercut with visual gags of tennis balls shooting out of a machine or hoses ejaculating. Still, the cast is game, the low budget aesthetics are kitsch-camp and the pace is snappy. It’s entertaining and it’s the kind of movie 90s Terry would have loved to stumble upon in the video aisle.