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The Little Stranger (2018) N
A doctor returns to his hometown and gets entangled in the lives of what's left of the family living in large but slowly crumbling manor.
I often like slow burn Gothic horrors and there's lots of good in The Little Stranger too but also lots of little issues that kinda pile up and weigh the whole down a notch. Perhaps my main issue with the film is its ambiguity or more precisely how it is achieved - both the script and Domhnall Gleeson are selling Dr. Faraday's envy so hard that the ending felt like a copout (it's about the envy anyways but the exact nature of events is left open for no good reason).
Acting is generally very good (especially Ruth Wilson and Will Poulter) but Gleeson is (probably per director's instructions) too emotionless and cold all the time. I suppose he's meant to try to act like the upper class gentleman does in his mind but it feels hard to grasp why the disillusioned and somewhat humble Caroline would fall for such antics. I found the relationship as a whole very unconvincing.
There's good atmosphere in The Little Stranger and it uses the class conflict pretty well as a base for the story. The build-up works to a large degree but like I said earlier it pushes its premise little too hard. It's pretty close to being good though and it definitely wouldn't need big changes to be that. We'll see if it grows on me with time but for now...
A doctor returns to his hometown and gets entangled in the lives of what's left of the family living in large but slowly crumbling manor.
I often like slow burn Gothic horrors and there's lots of good in The Little Stranger too but also lots of little issues that kinda pile up and weigh the whole down a notch. Perhaps my main issue with the film is its ambiguity or more precisely how it is achieved - both the script and Domhnall Gleeson are selling Dr. Faraday's envy so hard that the ending felt like a copout (it's about the envy anyways but the exact nature of events is left open for no good reason).
Acting is generally very good (especially Ruth Wilson and Will Poulter) but Gleeson is (probably per director's instructions) too emotionless and cold all the time. I suppose he's meant to try to act like the upper class gentleman does in his mind but it feels hard to grasp why the disillusioned and somewhat humble Caroline would fall for such antics. I found the relationship as a whole very unconvincing.
There's good atmosphere in The Little Stranger and it uses the class conflict pretty well as a base for the story. The build-up works to a large degree but like I said earlier it pushes its premise little too hard. It's pretty close to being good though and it definitely wouldn't need big changes to be that. We'll see if it grows on me with time but for now...