Film Review: The Little Stranger

"There Is Something Inside This House That Hates Us..."

Based upon Sarah Waters' 2009 novel of the same name, The Little Stranger sees the return of critically acclaimed Irish director Lenny Abrahamson, a filmmaker whose previous venture in the form of Room garnered universal praise, including here at Black Ribbon, alongside a fully deserved Oscar win for Captain Marvel herself, Brie Larson. With Abrahamson already being renowned for layered, thematic works of cinema which cut across a wide range of differing genres with ease, the same can be said for his latest venture, a dark, gloomy and overly Gothic portrayal of one man's venture into the life of a secretive family burdened with privilege and wealth, yet one haunted by the faint echo of death which seems to have canvassed inside their once prestigious home. Reuniting with Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) after their work together on the comedic oddity which was 2014's Frank, The Little Stranger does ultimately fail to live up to the excellence of Abrahamson's previous two ventures, with a sluggish pace and lack of real narrative push surprisingly making the Irish director's latest a real struggle for the most part, but with some rousing central performances and a fleeting number of creepy set pieces, The Little Stranger is still interesting enough to be seen. 

Whilst gothic cinema is always seeped in inspiration from timeless genre classics including the likes of The Haunting and The Fall of the House of Usher from the central macabre figure of the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe, Abrahamson's movie utilises the genre conventions as a somewhat secondary device, with focus primarily on Gleeson's Doctor Faraday, a well-spoken and educated middle class local go-to whose envy of the Ayres family and their inherited fame and fortune has troubled and haunted him since childhood. With the movie latching onto Faraday's point of view, his attempts to embed himself into the life and love of Ruth Wilson's (Luther) Caroline leads him to unravel secrets and mysteries gently hidden within the confines of the Ayres family home, and whilst the movie only briefly contains elements of pure, spine-tingling horror, including a brilliantly constructed final act, these moments are undoubtedly the strongest of the piece, with the familial dramas and attempts at elongated character studies which make up the bulk of the run time agonisingly dull. With Wilson the standout performer of the piece, following on from her similarly creepy performance in the little seen Netflix chiller, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Abrahamson clearly knows how to get the best out of his performers but fails, this time at least, in managing to fine tune both the pacing and tonal inconsistencies of a piece which deserved to be more rewarding. 

Overall Score: 6/10