Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
A woman finds a snake’s shed skin at the outset of Reptile, and not long afterwards, she’s dead, the victim of a murder born from a serpentine conspiracy. It’s a tantalizing beginning to Grant Singer’s directorial debut (on Netflix Sept. 29, following its Toronto International Film Festival premiere), which for long stretches successfully maintains its atmosphere of coiled malevolence. Such tension ultimately unravels during a latter half that rushes through too many underwhelming revelations, but that’s not enough to completely offset the film’s beguiling air of despondency, much of it embodied by an excellent Benicio Del Toro as a homicide detective mired in a nest of vipers.
In an unnamed section of chilly autumnal New England, Summer (Matilda Lutz) is discovered murdered in a for-sale house by her realtor partner and boyfriend Will (Justin Timberlake), having suffered 30-plus stab wounds that were so vicious, the knife became permanently stuck in her hip. Will works with his mother Camille (Frances Fisher) and is, by all appearances, a wealthy momma’s boy, and despite looking superficially suspicious, his airtight alibi and a lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime forces detective Tom (Del Toro) to turn his attention elsewhere. A veteran with a steely, cagey glint in his eyes, Tom is a veteran who has the respect of his peers and his partner Dan (Ato Essandoh), even though he has a shady Philly past involving a former partner who was busted for all manner of criminal conduct—misdeeds in which many assumed Tom participated.
Tom and Dan’s sleuthing leads them to Summer’s ex-husband Sam (Karl Glusman), a disreputable sort who lives in a ramshackle house and refuses to talk to law enforcement unless he’s charged or has a lawyer by his side. Sam resembles a prototypical murder suspect so it’s easy to identify him as a red herring, and that goes double for Tom’s hand injury, which two separate individuals remark upon, just to cast doubt about his underlying nature. Reptile’s initial machinations aren’t particularly clever and yet Singer is adept at setting a mood, dousing everything in rich shadows and employing a variety of silky snake-like pans and zooms through corridors, around corners, and—via a few Denis Villeneuve-esque aerial shots of racing cop cars—over solitary rural roads.