  Observation of large non-saturating magnetoresistance in rare-earth
monopnictides has raised enormous interest in understanding the role of its
electronic structure. Here, by a combination of molecular-beam epitaxy,
low-temperature transport, angle-resolved photoemssion spectroscopy, and hybrid
density functional theory we have unveiled the bandstructure of LuSb, where
electron-hole compensation is identified as a mechanism responsible for large
magnetoresistance in this topologically trivial compound. In contrast to bulk
single crystal analogues, quasi-two-dimensional behavior is observed in our
thin films for both electron and holelike carriers, indicative of dimensional
confinement of the electronic states. Introduction of defects through growth
parameter tuning results in the appearance of quantum interference effects at
low temperatures, which has allowed us to identify the dominant inelastic
scattering processes and elucidate the role of spin-orbit coupling. Our
findings open up new possibilities of band structure engineering and control of
transport properties in rare-earth monopnictides via epitaxial synthesis.
