Courteney Cox returned to directing with Evil Genius, a true crime thriller that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday. The film stars Patricia Arquette and David Harbour in an adaptation of the 2018 Netflix documentary series about the infamous 2003 Erie, Pennsylvania bank robbery. In that case, pizza delivery man Brian Wells was forced to rob a PNC Bank while wearing a bomb that later detonated and killed him.
Arquette plays Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the woman convicted of masterminding the scheme to fund a hit man against her estranged father. Harbour plays Bill Rothstein. Cox describes the result as a "twisted comedy," a tonal balance she was deliberate about. "I wanted to know: Who were these people and how did they do it?" Cox told The Wrap.
The film is Cox's second directorial feature. Her first, the black comedy Just Before I Go, was released in 2014. Twelve years later, she arrives at TIFF with considerably more complicated material. "There's a dysfunctional love story that's really the catalyst for this heist," Cox said. "I'm going to walk the line, tell the story with a tone that's not identifiable with any specific genre."
The cast leaned into that tone. Arquette, an Academy Award winner, described the case plainly: "It is truly the stupidest crime known to man. They think they're smarter than everybody else." Harbour echoed the register: "There's this very twisted comedy to cutting up and getting a body down the stairs."
Evil Genius is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
