Henry James’ The Turning of the Screw gets a fresh adaptation that began life as a reported Spielberg passion project. After a long drawn our production, how does this re-telling stack up?
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Set in the early 90’s (for reasons that are not entirely clear) Mackenzie Davis plays Kate, a young teacher who has left her job to go and work as a governess for a young girl, Flora Fairchild (Brooklynn Prince), who has been contained to her family’s grand manor and its grounds ever since witnessing her parents death. Kate sees a chance to help a girl in need, but things take a turn with the arrival of Flora’s brother, Miles (Finn Wolfhard), which coincides with Kate beginning to experience strange and ghostly visions around the manor.
The setup is a classic one and remains largely unchanged from the spine of Henry James’ novella. But that’s the issue with this adaptation. It is all set up. There is no sense of mystery established that propels Kate to either uncover something or to drive her to protect the children. Loosely defined spookiness occurs within the house, but the film feels too thinly sketched out to establish much in the way of atmosphere. It doesn’t help that the moments of Gothic horror feel too generic and a bit of an after-thought to leave much of an impression.
There is something going on under the surface that is desperate to break out, with the threads of a thematic concern focused around childhood trauma, with Kate also bringing her own baggage to the broken Fairchild manor what with having a mother in a psychiatric hospital. But the story becomes far too muddled in its telling that that message gets buried, particularly by a final act that robs much of that meaning away from the narrative and the relationships amongst the characters.
The cast is most certainly the biggest strength of this new adaptation. Wolfhard provides a good balance of privileged boy arrogance and creepy gothic kid glares, while Brooklynn Prince proves to be the standout. She brings a natural ease to her performance as the young Flora, striking up great chemistry with Davis. Scenes in which the two of them simply chat and develop a bond give glimpses of the heart that is struggling to surface under all the muddled undercooked gothic horror dressings. Davis herself is an engaging screen presence, but ultimately there’s not much of a character to play.
The long development surrounding this re-imagining of James’ classic story seems to have left this adaptation adrift, empty of atmosphere despite a strong cast and all the aesthetic dressings that make it look the part on the surface. Unfortunately, there’s just so little to hook you into the proceedings, with the setup never going anywhere. The horror elements feel too much of an afterthought, with little sense of elegant atmosphere or menace behind it all, with a final act twist that deflates the whole thing. It is very much a horror January release, one that has little to recommend it beyond the game efforts of a talented cast. When other, better adaptations of this text exist, there’s little here to make horror fans turn their heads.
The Turning is now playing.
