Screwed: "The Turning" offers plenty of classically creepy goodness before the unsatisfying "ending"


The Turning (2020)
94 min.
Release Date: January 24, 2020 (Wide)

“The Turning” is a 1994-set retelling of Henry James’ 1868 horror novella “The Turn of the Screw,” the first being 1961’s highly regarded “The Innocents,” about a young woman who takes a job as a live-in governess in a large country estate that may or may not be haunted. Directed by Floria Sigismondi (2010’s Kristen Stewart-as-Joan-Jett biopic “The Runaways”), working from a script by Carey Hayes and Chad Hayes (2013’s “The Conjuring”), the film is blessed with a classically creepy and foreboding gothic style, a handful of hair-raising spooks, and fine performances. While ambiguity is the name of the game with James’ much-debated source material, “The Turning” doesn’t quite stick the landing from one major sore spot: it concludes on an unsatisfying, unfinished note before cutting to black and then to an eerie end-credits sequence.

Mackenzie Davis (2019’s “Terminator: Dark Fate”) sells her performance with warmth, backbone, and eventually a crumbling fragility as Kate, a teacher who agrees to tutor 7-year-old orphan, Flora (Brooklynn Prince), in a sprawling Maine manor. Kate is delighted by the adorably precocious Flora, but her optimism clashes with the family’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Barbara Marten), who sternly tells Kate that Flora does not leave the property and questions if Kate will up and leave like the last nanny. In the middle of the night, Kate hears spooky whispers coming from the forbidden east wing of the estate, and by morning, Flora’s teenage brother, Miles (Finn Wolfhard), has made a surprise return from boarding school after being expelled. Almost immediately, Miles pushes Kate’s buttons and makes her feel uncomfortable, and even spearheads a cruel prank on Kate with his sister. Are malevolent specters haunting the house, or have the petulant “thoroughbreds” (as Mrs. Grose calls them) become possessed? Or, is it all in Kate’s splintering psyche?

For a long while, “The Turning” shapes up to be a moody, stylish slice of old-fashioned gothic horror, ready to be uttered in the same breath as 2001’s “The Others.” Director Sigismondi and cinematographer David Ungaro create a terrific atmosphere in and around the stately house. From the chilly but livable grounds, there’s a beautiful hedge maze that seems easy to get lost in, a stable of horses, and a koi pond where one fish probably won’t make it. Inside, there’s an indoor arboretum with headless dolls in a bird bath; a creepy sewing room, made creepier with a human-sized mannequin of an old maid; and hidden hallways that are perfect for a tense, if ill-advised, game of flashlight tag. When it’s relying upon suggestion and apprehension—or even delivering a socko jump scare involving a window being shut—the film excels as a ghost story that might be dipping into a psychological unraveling. 

Davis is quite good, conveying Kate’s descent into madness as her restless, nightmare-laden nights worsen and her entire demeanor gradually changes over the course of the film. She might be overwhelmed and seeing things that aren’t there, but no matter the real answer, her disorienting confusion is shared by the viewer. Brooklyn Prince (2017’s “The Florida Project”) and Finn Wolfhard (2017’s “It”) are both unnerving in their own way, the former playing Flora as a playful innocent and the latter playing Miles as a disturbed adolescent, and Barbara Marten is quietly chilling as the cold Mrs. Grose.

With just her second feature, director Sigismondi brings her music-video directing background to the film’s pre-cell phone 1994 setting, Kurt Cobain’s suicide being announced on a TV set in the opening moments and Miles being obsessed with rock music. If the film is respectable on a technical and performance level, it’s the screenplay that could have afforded a bit more polish and fine-tuning. There’s history between the impressionable Miles and his late riding instructor, who’s lecherous even as a ghost, that never gets explored deeply enough, and a subplot involving Kate’s institutionalized mother (Joely Richardson) feels like a half-formed idea in the final edit and only bungles the ending. A little bit of ambiguity that leaves the audience to interpret the rest can be a pitch-perfect way to end a film. In the case of “The Turning,” it doesn’t end so much as stop with an abrupt shrug. Does a film live or die on an unsatisfying wrap-up, rendering everything that’s good about it all for naught? “The Turning” proves that there can still be enough to like for most of its run time, even when it's frustrating that the filmmakers clearly did not know how to bring it all home.

Grade: B -

Comments