The Little Stranger (2018)

Film: The Little Stranger (2018)
Stars: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, Charlotte Rampling
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

"A little slow" is not an insult that I usually care about when it comes to movies.  Generally, I find that I have more patience for the cinema than your average moviegoer, and am at home with moody silences, muted stares, and plots that reveal all but do so in a subtle way.  Knowing this, I ignored some of the more negative reviews of The Little Stranger, Lenny Abrahamson's followup to Room, the latter of which he was nominated for a Best Director Academy Award.  After all, it stars Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, and in particular Charlotte Rampling, none of whom is a slouch when it comes to the art of acting, and the trailers had a lot of promise.  The film, though, short changes its leading man when it comes to the script, and suffers from, well, being a bit slow, alas proving that I have a tolerance for, but am not immune to, such criticisms.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in the late forties, right after World War II, but you'll be forgiven for assuming that it occurs in an earlier century, as so much of the film is about the fall of the class system in Great Britain.  We see Dr. Faraday (his first name is never mentioned in the picture from what I can remember, a sign you'll realize is foreboding as the movie continues), played by Gleeson, coming to call on a young maid who is pretending to be sick because she hates working in Hundreds Hall, a once magnificent 18th century mansion that has fallen into disrepair, much like its family.  The three remaining owners of the house are Angela Ayres (Rampling), a monarch that still thinks she's living before the first war, her more modern daughter Caroline (Wilson), and Roddy (Poulter), the technical owner of the house who lives in the outskirts of society because he was badly burned and disfigured during his time in the war.  All of the characters are haunted by the memory of Angela's first daughter Susan, who died in 1919 and was clearly Angela's favorite child.

The film progresses with a series of unusual, and occasionally unexplained instances occurring in the house, especially to the three living members of the Ayres Family.  A girl visiting them is disfigured by a seemingly sweet-and-kind dog, then Roddy goes mad and starts burning down their library.  All-the-while, it appears that Faraday is going to be romantically involved with Caroline, to the point where she eventually becomes engaged to him, but it's clear she doesn't love him and he becomes harder & crueler as the movie progresses.  The class system also is at-play, though Abrahamson's gentle touch with the story doesn't have him spell it out for the audience.  Even though Faraday is an up-and-comer and promising figure in his medical field and Caroline lives in a rundown house, the social cues of the time still put her in a place of privilege that he cannot reach thanks to her name and birth.  Faraday becomes increasingly controlling, wanting to force Caroline into picking a date or even have sex with him, but her resistance makes him furious.  Gleeson, the best part of the movie, does a superb job of not entirely letting us see the misogynist within until Caroline starts to realize it, and at that point Susan's "ghost" has reared its head.

The film's final twenty minutes, where we'd expect most of the big horror movie moments (either Susan being truly real or realizing that Faraday is intentionally inflicting pain upon the Ayres Family as retribution for denying him his expected place in high society) don't happen.  A sly scene about poltergeists that feels a bit out-of-place (it likely should have occurred earlier in the film so as not to completely show the screenwriter's hand) proves that it is Faraday's younger self who is torturing the family in various fashions, taking the manifestation of the thing that torments them each the most, and implying heavily that he has been around since Susan saw him misbehave and be slapped by his mother as a child, perhaps even claiming her as his first victim.  It's clever, but underdone, just like the movie.  Subtlety occasionally falls into the trap of boredom, and while Gleeson & Wilson are giving nuanced work, it doesn't save us from the length of the picture or the unanswered questions from the film's middle, particularly the way the script doesn't quite know what to do with Roddy (Poulter is giving the weakest performance in the film, being asked to play a more bombastic character while not showing all of the reveals too early in the picture).  All-in-all, there's clearly promise here, but it doesn't quite have the confidence or the crisp ending that a film that favors style, mood, and simplicity can get away with without risking a dull middle.