Movie Time Review: Inheritance

The crew got the chance to screen and review Inheritance, a documentary about Curtis, a boy whose family lives along the Ohio River and have a generational curse: drug addiction. The documentary chronicles a ten year period in Curtis's life where his family suffers through prison, homelessness, joblessness and foster care all the while navigating through the opioid crisis that's plagued the United States for the past couple years. Produced and directing by Matt Moyer and Amy Toensing who are making their feature documentary debut whose background is very extensive. Their background to pick up this story about Curtis and his family is fascinating. Before we get to Curtis and his struggle to avoid the generational curse, the directors took the audience back to the beginning to Curtis's uncles, aunts and grandparents. There are five generations documented in the film but the one that gets the most attention is J.P. who is Curtis' cousin and during the film he had the most promise to break the family curse but succumb to it when his mother overdosed (which is a controversial family topic) and once his mother passed J.P. goes downward to the point we went to jail for killing his girlfriend and unborn child while driving under the influence. His story parallels Curtis a bit where at a young age he witness his parents doing drugs and coming in and out of jail because of their addiction. J.P. and his fiancé tries to become independent by working odd jobs and avoiding their past friends who are still using, Their path leads them to church which is a prominent theme throughout the film.

When J.P.'s story starts to unfold you feel the pain in his words when he talks to his addiction to him being prison and staying alive in there to serving the people food through a food bank. You can see he was trying to make changes but towards the end it's his addiction is too strong to overcome. The grandparents and parents of Curtis are dealing with their own personal demons to the point where one parent ends up in the hospital fighting for their life or still using drugs but only prescription. The main topic of the documentary is Curtis and his family, the real topic is the opioid crisis that causes families to live in poverty, prison or in generational cycles of abuse and addiction. Watching generations of the family walking through a never ending cycle is unreal because you or the audience would think someone would change but they don't. That the thing about Inheritance is that you root for rhe family to be clean and hopefully break out of the cycle but there seem to be no hope or future for them to realize. The film is a great essay on how the country is really living with addiction and how the people is just trying it day by day through faith and a little luck. A brilliant film and one that deserves any accolade it's nominated for.

Inheritance is produced by MILLRock Productions, Calliope Pictures in association with Liucrative Media.