Lenny Abrahamson arrived on the film scene with the blistering double whammy of ADAM AND PAUL and GARAGE. Since then he has gone on to do the compelling and understated crime drama WHAT RICHARD DID, the madcap FRANK and the excellent film adaptation of ROOM. THE LITTLE STRANGER feels like the first misstep of his career.
Working from a Sarah Waters' novel that is full of her usual obsessions with class, status and outsider challenges to the British social order, Abrahamson's elegant aesthetic - first road-tested in WHAT RICHARD DID - opens out Hundreds Hall as an architectural manifestation of the decaying post-WII colonial order. There is plenty of eerie and uncanny atmosphere within the marginal spaces of this dilapidated Wiltshire country pile.
The matriarch of the Ayres family is played by the always watchable Charlotte Rampling, while Will Poulter and Ruth Wilson are both excellent as the Charlotte's living children - one a battle-scarred fighter pilot and the other the unsung brains behind what remains of the Ayres' agricultural operations. However, none of these characters are given as much screen time as the central figure of Dr. Faraday, played with dull restraint by the frequently unwatchable Domhnall Gleeson. In the best of his work the younger Gleeson is a callow or prickly presence - think EX MACHINA or that intensely weird episode of BLACK MIRROR. However, for my money he is too often coasting along in roles that require a little more intensity or nuance. In THE LITTLE STRANGER his conniving social climber owns the narrative, but drains all life from it with his blandly insipid presence.
It is a great shame, as Abrahamson has done so much of the hard work of creating mood and atmosphere, with a few scenes ascending to the realm of truly terrifying, especially a canine attack on an unsuspecting child. Yet with the film's focus firmly ensconced with an interminable central character and a not-so-mysterious plot, the film never really comes to life.
Working from a Sarah Waters' novel that is full of her usual obsessions with class, status and outsider challenges to the British social order, Abrahamson's elegant aesthetic - first road-tested in WHAT RICHARD DID - opens out Hundreds Hall as an architectural manifestation of the decaying post-WII colonial order. There is plenty of eerie and uncanny atmosphere within the marginal spaces of this dilapidated Wiltshire country pile.
The matriarch of the Ayres family is played by the always watchable Charlotte Rampling, while Will Poulter and Ruth Wilson are both excellent as the Charlotte's living children - one a battle-scarred fighter pilot and the other the unsung brains behind what remains of the Ayres' agricultural operations. However, none of these characters are given as much screen time as the central figure of Dr. Faraday, played with dull restraint by the frequently unwatchable Domhnall Gleeson. In the best of his work the younger Gleeson is a callow or prickly presence - think EX MACHINA or that intensely weird episode of BLACK MIRROR. However, for my money he is too often coasting along in roles that require a little more intensity or nuance. In THE LITTLE STRANGER his conniving social climber owns the narrative, but drains all life from it with his blandly insipid presence.
It is a great shame, as Abrahamson has done so much of the hard work of creating mood and atmosphere, with a few scenes ascending to the realm of truly terrifying, especially a canine attack on an unsuspecting child. Yet with the film's focus firmly ensconced with an interminable central character and a not-so-mysterious plot, the film never really comes to life.