Windfall Director Charlie McDowell on Making a Film Without a Traditional Protagonist

With Windfall now streaming on Netflix, I recently spoke with director Charlie McDowell about making the Hitchcockian thriller. Written by McDowell’s frequent collaborator Justin Lader as well as Seven scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, the film is about a wealthy couple (Lily Collins and Jesse Plemons) who arrive at their vacation home only to find it’s being robbed by Jason Segel. Unlike many films that explain every character’s motivation and feature people making decisions dictated by studio notes and test screening audiences, Windfall takes the opposite approach. In the film, Segel is known as Nobody, while Plemons is simply called CEO, and Collins is credited as Wife. And while you’ll learn a lot about each character, not everything is explained, and it’s refreshing. McDowell and his screenwriting team let the viewer decide why certain things are happening and between that and the three great performances by Segel, Collins, and Plemons, Windfall is worth your time. During the interview, M