Resurrection

When films treat us like psychoanalysts, openly asking us to differentiate their characters’ delusions from reality, we should start charging them an hourly rate. Margaret is definitely that kind of unreliable protagonist. Her daughter understandably begs her to seek help, but viewers are the ones who have to judge whether her stalker crisis is legit in Andrews Semans’ Resurrection, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Initially, Margaret is so together, she can give the intern empowerment lessons without sounding condescending (not really, but the intern acts like she can). However, the wheels come off shockingly quickly when she spies David Moore, a man from her secret past. As we learn, Moore trapped her in an appallingly abusive and manipulating relationship.

Apparently, Moore is smart-stalking her, appearing in public places, acting like the picture of mild-mannered innocence. Of course, Margaret knows better and Moore will not wait too long to justify her fear. Unfortunately, Margaret is not merely apprehensive. She downshifts into such unhinged mania, Rebecca Hall’s performance has earned comparisons to Isabelle Adjani’s freakout in Possession.

We are told (and come to believe) Moore’s behavior was not just violent and controlling. He took viciousness to macabre extremes. That would still be believable, until Semans ratchets it up to borderline fantastical levels. Yet, that wrinkle is the only interesting angle of an otherwise wildly overwrought stalker thriller, better suited to the Lifetime network than arthouse cinemas.

Sundance ’20: The Night House

Imagine if Jerry Zucker’s Ghost had been tweaked into a terrifying horror movie rather than a paranormal romance. That is basically where this film starts, but it goes off in a crazy occult direction all its own. Being a grieving young widow is still painfully hard and it only gets harder in David Bruckner’s The Night House, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

It is hard to blame Beth for using a whole lot of wine to self-medicate the pain of her husband Owen’s recent inexplicable suicide. He left a note, but it takes her a while to summon the resolve to read it and when she does, it makes absolutely no sense. As she drinks herself to sleep, she starts to feel Owen’s presence. The sensation grows in intensity, as things start to go bump in the night. That might sound like a relatively conventional movie haunting, but the uncanny goings-on take on sinister metaphysical dimensions as Beth follows Owen’s trail down the rabbit-hole.

Getting too specific would be spoilery, but there are a number of original elements in Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski’s screenplay that are really creepy. This might be Bruckner’s best work at the helm (even better than The Ritual), but he gets critical contributions from the art and design team. From the eerie looking lake house to some ominous rare books Beth unearths, the props and settings really help intensify the vibe of deepening dread.

A Promise: Leconte Adapts Zweig

Few understood the pain of involuntary exile as acutely as Stefan Zweig. In his day, the Jewish Austrian was the world’s most translated author, but he took his own life while living as a political émigré in Brazil. In his posthumous novella, Journey into the Past, Zweig’s protagonist is also stranded in Latin America, separated from his love and homeland. For his first English language film, French director Patrice Leconte adapted Zweig’s wistful German tale with a British cast. Whether you consider it reserved or repressed, it is most definitely “Old” Europe that dictates social expectations for the characters of Leconte’s A Promise (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Friedrich Zeitz has done the near impossible. Like a German Horatio Alger hero, the poor orphan worked his way through university as a scholarship student, eventually finding employment in the offices of the steelworks owned and operated by the dreaded Herr Karl Hoffmeister. At least, Zeitz is told to fear his aristocratic boss. However, when Herr Hoffmeister notices the young man’s keen grasp of metallurgy and relentless work ethic, he takes a shine to his new clerk.

With his health slowly declining, the increasingly home-bound Herr Hoffmeister promotes Zeitz to serve as his private secretary and liaison to the corporate office. Of course, that home is more of a castle. As soon as he is admitted into the Hoffmeister estate, Zeitz promptly falls head over heels for his boss’s younger wife, Charlotte (who goes by Lotte, echoing Zweig’s wife and secretary, Lotte Altmann).

Lotte Hoffmeister is unfailingly gracious and welcoming to Zeitz, but she initially seems oblivious to his attraction, despite the way his eyes bug out of his head like a cartoon character whenever she is around. Still, maybe someone notices his torch-carrying. Just as Zeitz is transferred to Hoffmeister’s embryonic mining operation in Mexico, Lotte Hoffmeister confesses Zeitz’s ardor is reciprocated. They vow (or promise, if you will) to do something about it, once he returns from his two year stint abroad. Then World War I breaks out.

One of the ironies Leconte and co-adaptor Jérôme Tonnere clearly make without excessively belaboring is the extent highly intelligent people can lose sight of the critically important macro events swirling around them because they are caught up in their own personal dramas. Despite working in the steel industry, Zeitz and Herr Hoffmeister are caught completely flat-footed by the onset of the first World War (you think they might have noticed a slight uptick in government orders). Likewise, the climatic reunion commences just as the growing ranks of National Socialists launch another street protest-riot.

The passionate feelings of Zeitz and Frau Hoffmeister are so chaste and restrained A Promise is likely to frustrate most viewers more accustomed to instant gratification. Yet, the yearn and burn of their thwarted love is quite powerful for those who can appreciate it. Unfortunately, Rebecca Hall and Richard (Game of Thrones) Madden must make the most vanilla couple you will ever see as Zeitz and Frau Hoffmeister. In contrast, Alan Rickman outshines everyone as the sly but not villainous Herr Hoffmeister, showing the sort of erudite charisma he brought to bear in overlooked films like Bottle Shock and Song of Lunch.

Handsomely mounted, A Promise’s period details are elegant but convincingly Teutonic in their chilly austerity, while superstar cinematographer Eduardo Serra gives it all a sensitive sheen superior to the look of your average BBC historical. A mature and emotionally sophisticated literary drama largely waterlogged by its two cold fish romantic leads, A Promise is flawed but still oddly enticing for those who share its Old European sensibilities. It opens this Friday (4/18) at the IFC Center.

The Awakening: the Interwar Ghost-Hunter

It was always an old English tradition to have a ghost in your country house.  After World War I, there were also plenty of dearly departed to be visited by.  Of course, this led to a grand opportunity for a host of charlatans armed with a few garden variety parlor tricks.  Florence Cathcart has made it her calling to debunk those flim-flam artists while she struggles with her own emotional issues in Nick Murphy’s The Awakening (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Cathcart is a bestseller, celebrated and sometimes reviled for her work exposing phony spiritualists.  That is actually no small accomplishment for a British woman in 1919.  While she is on friendly terms with Scotland Yard, she feels hollow inside.  Robert Mallory is also skeptical, at least of her brilliance.  However, with the boys of his private school spooked by sightings of a spectral student from years past, he reluctantly seeks her help, which she reluctantly gives.  Much to her surprise though, Rookwood’s haunting is not so easy to dismiss.

Determined to crack the case, Cathcart stays on at Rookwood over the holiday break, with only Mallory, Maud Hill the kitchen matron, and young Tom, a student unable to return home during the academic hiatus, for company.  There might be a few more malevolent entities as well, such as the brutish groundskeeper and perhaps the odd supernatural element.

Awakening starts out strong, establishing a vivid sense of time and place.  Much like Rodrigo Cortés’ nose-diving Red Lights, the early séance-busting scenes are fun and atmospheric.  The locations are certainly evocative too.  Lyme Park in Cheshire, where most of the exteriors were shot (having previously stood in for Pemberley in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) has to be one of the most severe looking estates the aristocracy ever summered in.  Cinematographer Eduard Grau certainly makes it appear ominous and full of foreboding.  Unfortunately, it all builds towards an over the top conclusion, loaded with contrived twists that would only leave M. Night Shyamalan satisfied.

Rebecca Hall is okay as the doubter in crisis.  She has the necessary intelligent presence and shivers with admirable conviction.  However, the real standout work comes from Dominic West (terrific in BBC America’s The Hour) as the WWI veteran Mallory, with the heart of a romantic and a persistent case of survivor’s guilt.  It is sensitive, deeply humane turn.

Like many supernatural films, The Awakening completely dispenses with its better judgment in the third act.  Still, its first two thirds are effectively eerie and entertaining.  Frankly that is above average for the genre standard.  Recommended for those who enjoy the conventions of old dark British haunted houses, The Awakening opens this Friday (8/17) in New York at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Empire.