I kind of get where Pablo Larson was going but, for me, it was wildly off the mark.
This is a horror film. It's protagonist is a vulnerable young woman who is kept a virtual prisoner in a spooky old house by a creepy family who live in virtual isolation from the normal world, and by a set of rules that are impossible to follow. Our heroine brings her own ghosts with her but also has some set upon her. She's desperate to protect her children, and she's desperate to escape. It's kind of The Others but with less interesting twists.
As a plot summary it reads fine, but the problem is that we already know the story. As a fiction it's a series of tropes that are so worn out that the concept and presentation would have to be immaculate to feel fresh. It isn't, and it doesn't.
And as a posited version of factual events, well we already know that story too. Or think we do, at least.
The score is a dominant player, but the loopy discordant jazz is too irritating to be atmospheric and the contrast with 80s escapist pop is well intended but hammy.
It's basically a solo show for poor Kristen Stewart. Alistair Gregory is wasted as the gross ringmaster called in to break the back of Diana's rebellion either by negotiation or by shoving her completely over the edge - a tactic in part achieved with a dreadfully rendered Anne Boleyn ghostie conjured up. Jack Farthing gets one half good scene as Charles. Sally Hawkins and Sean Harris are the two points of adult humanity drafted in to amp up the contrast with the grim Family - that they are staff I guess telegraphs that apparently those 'downstairs' have hearts, while the monsters upstairs don't. Hearts which, in the case of Hawkins' Sally are maybe a little too fully given. But who doesn't love a princess, right?
So it's the Kristen Stewart show and she is working SO hard, but for me it's an uneven and distracting performance. She takes the Diana-isms so far that I worried she'd end up with either a neck injury or an asthma attack. I took heart from her scenes with Jack Nielen and Freddy Spry who are charming as William and Harry. The interaction between the three approaches feeling authentic, but falls apart when William is forced to parent Diana as her mental health unwinds.
For me, this is one of those movies where both too much, and too little happens. It ended up feeling campy, but not in a good way. Frankly I would have been happier if they'd lent in and gone full horror vibe, but Larson pulls up short, creating a pretty 'meh' vibe and adding nothing to the canon of the global Diana obsession.
This is a horror film. It's protagonist is a vulnerable young woman who is kept a virtual prisoner in a spooky old house by a creepy family who live in virtual isolation from the normal world, and by a set of rules that are impossible to follow. Our heroine brings her own ghosts with her but also has some set upon her. She's desperate to protect her children, and she's desperate to escape. It's kind of The Others but with less interesting twists.
As a plot summary it reads fine, but the problem is that we already know the story. As a fiction it's a series of tropes that are so worn out that the concept and presentation would have to be immaculate to feel fresh. It isn't, and it doesn't.
And as a posited version of factual events, well we already know that story too. Or think we do, at least.
The score is a dominant player, but the loopy discordant jazz is too irritating to be atmospheric and the contrast with 80s escapist pop is well intended but hammy.
It's basically a solo show for poor Kristen Stewart. Alistair Gregory is wasted as the gross ringmaster called in to break the back of Diana's rebellion either by negotiation or by shoving her completely over the edge - a tactic in part achieved with a dreadfully rendered Anne Boleyn ghostie conjured up. Jack Farthing gets one half good scene as Charles. Sally Hawkins and Sean Harris are the two points of adult humanity drafted in to amp up the contrast with the grim Family - that they are staff I guess telegraphs that apparently those 'downstairs' have hearts, while the monsters upstairs don't. Hearts which, in the case of Hawkins' Sally are maybe a little too fully given. But who doesn't love a princess, right?
So it's the Kristen Stewart show and she is working SO hard, but for me it's an uneven and distracting performance. She takes the Diana-isms so far that I worried she'd end up with either a neck injury or an asthma attack. I took heart from her scenes with Jack Nielen and Freddy Spry who are charming as William and Harry. The interaction between the three approaches feeling authentic, but falls apart when William is forced to parent Diana as her mental health unwinds.
For me, this is one of those movies where both too much, and too little happens. It ended up feeling campy, but not in a good way. Frankly I would have been happier if they'd lent in and gone full horror vibe, but Larson pulls up short, creating a pretty 'meh' vibe and adding nothing to the canon of the global Diana obsession.