Stream It Or Skip It: ‘I Came By’ on Netflix, a Sturdy Serial Killer-Thriller That’s as Silly as it is Socially Conscious

Netflix film I Came By stars Hugh Bonneville as a top-shelf upper-crust grade-A supercreep who loves Rick and Morty, which I found rather offensive. NOT ALL RICK AND MORTY UBERFANS ARE SERIAL KILLERS. Just need to make that clear. We didn’t all stand in line for szechuan sauce. Anyway. Director Babak Anvari’s thriller is otherwise a pretty grim affair anchored by the ever-underrated Kelly MacDonald, 1917’s George MacKay and the less-recognizable Percelle Ascott, who might just give the most-memorable performance in this oft-watchable, just as oft-improbable movie that slides ideas about privilege and race in with many of the usual genre tropes.

I CAME BY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Toby (MacKay) and Jay (Ascott) practice antidisestablishmentarianism by breaking into the homes of rich and influential people and tagging their walls with graffiti. I CAME BY is their spraypaint signature, earning them notoriety and news clips. Toby is 23 and jobless, living with his mom (MacDonald), who worries about his anger and aimlessness. We pan over his room, covered with his wild artwork, and hear A Clockwork Orange music – a little bit of the Ludwig Van – which suggests things, maybe. Jay works a legit construction job and, while working on a fancy house belonging to former judge Hector Blake (Bonneville), suggests this old-money guy should be their next target. He’s even got ivory tusks on his mantel. F— that jerk.

But then Jay’s girlfriend Naz (Varada Sethu) has a doctor appointment, and you know what that means in movies like this – yep, she’s pregnant, but the movie wisely stops short of her running to the loo to barf. So Jay wants to get out of the quasi-anarchy biz and fly straight. He’s been nipped a couple times and as a Black man, he says, one more time will put him away for a long time. So Toby has to go it alone. He disables Hector’s wifi security system and gets a big eyeful of the painted portrait of Hector’s father, grimfaced and looming huge over the mantel. Curious. Then he hears a noise in the basement. He investigates. Thump, clunk. Just an oscillating fan. But the thump-clunk continues anyway. Where’s that sliver of light coming from? A secret hidden door?

Elsewhere, it’s established that Hector is very very fit and just as connected: He just walloped the police commish in a game of racquetball. He’s also connected in a technology sense – he gets a phone notification that his security system has been disarmed. Uh oh. All I’ll say is that things progress, ominously. Hector’s eating lunch in front of the TV one day and the clunk-thump-clunk from downstairs is loud so he just turns up Rick and Morty to drown it out and then KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. It’s the cops. Which might almost be funnier than Rick and Morty (it’s not; nothing’s funnier than Rick and Morty), because do you really think a rich white former judge can’t lean on the cops and get the benefit of the doubt?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I Came By is a derivation of Don’t Breathe and The Silence of the Lambs in a 2022 sociopolitical context a la Get Out.

Performance Worth Watching: Ascott is awarded a character with relative nuance in a screenplay that saddles MacDonald and Bonneville with 1-D arcs – fraught mother and psycho deviant, respectively. Jay is at least caught between the good ol’ rock and a hard place, torn between helping his pal Toby, a path to inevitable trouble, and committing to his young family.

Memorable Dialogue: Hector sneers at a cop – Black and female, notably – who’s investigating his fishy behavior: “Is that all you got? You looked like one of the smart ones.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I Came By is a thoughtfully directed exercise in suspense and heavy-handed socially conscious gestures that maintains our interest despite a sloppy screenplay that makes awkward jumps through time and frequently shifts from one protagonist to the next. That makes it hard to fall into a groove with any of the characters, Anvari (co-writing with Namsi Khan) leaning on our general disgust for the Bonneville baddie’s vile nature to drive the plot forward – forward through plot holes, implausible situations and logical inconsistencies.

But those aren’t dealbreakers. Anvari’s greater concern seems to be to keep us off balance and guessing his next maneuver, waiting for the other shoe to drop even though it never drops. Rather than remaining content to offer another bland crime-thriller, the filmmaker further couches his ambitions in the text, making damn sure we’re aware that White Privilege is the demon whispering in the ears of the powerful class, ever arrogant and overconfident. Sometimes a little anarchy is necessary to balance things out, and if that suggestion isn’t much for subtext, at least it’s something.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I Came By is sometimes little more than an inch deep and often more than a bit silly. But it keeps our eyes and ears and brains engaged, the mark of a rock-solid thriller.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.