‘The Oath’: Ike Barinholtz’s Darkly Comedic Trump-Era Nightmare Is ‘The Purge’ but Funny

The Trump era has most certainly led to a lot of provocative art seemingly made in response to it, even if said art wasn’t explicitly intended to be a response to Trump, his election, or the American temperature that led to it. But with a movie like Ike Barinholtz’s The Oath, there can be no doubt the conditions that led to him writing and directing this piece of comedy-horror. And while it opts for a fictionalized version of a nightmare near-future, we can all easily see where he’s coming from.

Barinholtz, the star of films like Neighbors, Sisters, and most recently so excellent in Blockers, had previously only co-written the Kevin Hart/Dwayne Johnson comedy Central Intelligence. For his directorial debut, however, he took on the job of writer, producer, and star as well. He plays Chris, a happily married liberal father of one who looks in horror at his phone all day and his TV every night at the day’s latest current-events catastrophe. The divisive President of the United States has proposed a loyalty oath that citizens “have the option” to sign, one that pledges fidelity not only to America but to its chief executive. Those who don’t sign won’t be targeted for anything, assures an unconvincing White House spokesperson, though things will be better for those two do (the tax credits, alone!). Chris fumes and fumes to his wife, Kai (Tiffany Haddish), who is right there with him in feeling things are fucked up, though she’s got her eye on raising their daughter rather than on the MSNBC ticker.

It’s a relationship that’s easy to see yourself in, either in Chris’s chained-to-Twitter, continuously outraged, vigilant lib or in Kai’s balance of supporting the good fight while being fatigued about fighting it. That’s life in 2018 (when the film was released in theaters), 2019, and probably for a lot of years to come. The parts of The Oath that work mostly sit within that dynamic, and the trench warfare that arises when Chris’s more conservative family members start trickling in for Thanksgiving dinner and the subject of this loyalty oath becomes a hot potato that no one (except Chris) wants to talk about. It’s when The Oath starts to become a darkly comedic take on The Purge that the movie can’t quite seem to figure out what it wants to say about it all.

What’s too bad is that The Oath loses control of its instrument just as the film’s most riveting performance enters the picture. John Cho and Billy Magnussen show up on Black Friday as a pair of homeland security officers from the “Citizen Protection Unit” (they’re very much not cops, and their authority is quite murky, which of course is the point). They’ve come to investigate a violation of the loyalty oath, and it’s here were things begin to spiral out of control. Cho is, as always, a fantastic and steady presence in any comedy ensemble, but Magnussen is genuinely electric in the kind of role I don’t think we’ve seen from him yet. He’s a who we know can do intensity. He’s brought it to his roles in The Big Short, Ingrid Goes West, and Netflix’s Maniac. But I keep getting surprised by this guy. It’s probably because he has the blond hair and sick body of an Instagram model and that some of his earliest roles (Boardwalk Empire; Broadway’s Vanya and Sonya and Spike) traded on his body in a way that suggested that was all he offered. But whether it’s his cluelessly swoony prince in Into the Woods or comedic scene-stealing in Game Night, Magnussen impresses again and again. Here, he’s utterly committed and terrifying, playing a right-wing reactionary whose time has now come to assert some authority over the whiny libs who have been steadily pissing him off for years. For as much as The Oath wants to nail the crazy-making 24-hour news cycle, it’s Magnussen’s vision of impotent right-wing that’s suddenly been handed a permission slip and a weapon that truly crystalizes a fear of Where Things Are Headed.

Ultimately, The Oath feels like a whole lot of potential that fizzles when it hits the air. The observations aren’t sharp enough. The messages are muddled (so we should … wait for Mike Pence to step in and save us??). And Get Out is still way too fresh in our minds for this kind of “politically relevant horror in the suburbs” thing to feel all that impressive. But I wouldn’t have missed that Magnussen performance for the world.

Where to stream The Oath