A film’s ending has the power to make, or break, the entire
preceding story. That feeling where I think I’ve got a handle on what a
given film is aiming for, only for the production to pull the rug out from
under my feet, is a jarring one and something that can mess with the process of
writing a review afterwards because it requires a serious amount of re-adjustment;
this is part of the reason why I never really got my head around Hereditary
when it came time to formally review it. But then there’s films like this,
where that jarring feeling doesn’t make me think I need to re-assess what I
just watched; it only solidifies that the film itself sucks.
It keeps hinting at potentially interesting ideas, like the
Flanaganian toying with the line between mental illness and the truly
supernatural (I can see why Turn Of The Screw is set to be adapted for the next
season of The Haunting), or how the main ghost story gets turned into an allegory
for how the loss of a parent and even sexual abuse can linger on well after
death. Not that the film really ends up doing anything with either of those
ideas; it kinda keeps itself in bog-standard ghost story neutral.
For context on that point, the true sign that this isn’t
working with everything it has on offer is in the attempt at period detail,
since this has been brought forward from the source material’s Victorian era.
Specifically, the 90s… although why they even bothered is beyond me. It could’ve
just been done in the generic ‘present’, but no, we needed to specifically know
that Kurt Cobain committed suicide shortly before the film’s main events take
place, because I’m guessing that grunge aesthetic is inherently more
interesting than Victorian costume drama. Not that I necessarily disagree with
that in principle, but it isn’t really needed here.
From there, the scares on display are pretty basic and, much
to my chagrin, anchored on the editing and soundtrack to even work most of the
time. Director Floria Sigismondi shows a definite knack for mood and even a bit
of psychological chicanery, but the bulk of her expertise is in music videos
and it shows way too often to keep the tension at a reasonable high.
It’s all a bunch of build-up, with tantalising pieces of
theme here and there, that comes to a very abrupt and particularly
pulled-out-of-arse conclusion that basically wastes everything that came before
it; it’s like Eli all over again. As much as everyone on-screen is trying to
make this work (Mackenzie Davis is a solid lead, and Finn Wolfhard works quite well as a potential extension of influence from beyond the grave), and as much as this film’s pretence as a more feminist take on
the classic story gives it some form of raison d’etre, I feel quite cheated
after sitting through this mess.
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