The Little Stranger (2018, Dir. Lenny Abrahamson):
“This house works on people.” These words are uttered by Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson), caretaker of an aged manor that exerts a sinister influence on its occupants. But is her statement an accurate summation of the situation, or the ravings of a woman losing her sanity? That’s up to a doctor named Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) to decide, and it’s the setup for The Little Stranger, a detour into Gothic supernaturalism by director Lenny Abrahamson, who’s coming off two acclaimed movies in a row (Frank and Room). Think Rebecca with some gender role reversals and you get the general gist.
The story, faithfully adapted by Lucinda Coxon from the Sarah Waters novel, is set in post-World War II Britain. Called to Hundreds Hall at the behest of the Ayres family to tend to a maid (Liv Hill) who would like nothing better than to get out, Faraday falls into the orbit of Caroline, her invalid brother Roderick (Will Poulter), and their genial mother (Charlotte Rampling). Faraday himself is no stranger to the family — as an ordinary local lad three decades before, he visited the hall on a fateful afternoon, and is still haunted by the occasion. Even as he befriends Roderick and swoons for dowdy yet feisty Caroline, calamitous events and omens accumulate: a near-fatal fire, intimations of ghosts, a member of the family who died under clouded circumstances, service bells that seem to ring by themselves. “There’s something in this house that hates us,” declares Caroline, and as disaster overtakes the Ayres family, it remains to be seen if Faraday has a role to play in averting further catastrophes, or if he’ll be caught up with the Ayres’ misfortunes himself.
Give this to Abrahamson: he knows how to create an off-kilter mood, and from its first frame The Little Stranger is suffused with dread. This is a post-war world bleached of sunlight, roiling with class and romantic tensions. As a man with lowly origins, Faraday is semi-seduced by the Ayres’ status, even if their estate has fallen into ruin. On her part, Caroline is a hardened fatalist longing for a life of normalcy. Wilson, who was smashing as a playful serial killer in Luther, is equally compelling here as Caroline. Modulating her performance, she seems forever on the edge of either a breakthrough or a breakdown. Hearkening back to old-school pieces like The Haunting, or an Edgar Allen Poe tale, the film’s scares are of the psychological variety, as the malign atmosphere spreads everywhere, like mist, without a specific source.
The Little Stranger hits an early peak with an uneasy dinner party that takes a shocking turn into violence. From there, though, the film loses its grip with a overlong second act, in which Faraday engages in a protracted romantic pursuit of Caroline. One can sense the original intention behind Waters’ novel — instead of giving us a straight ghost story, she wants us to cozy in with these characters, and become sensitive to their emotional perturbations. But while one could luxuriate in Waters’ prose as she segued into drama, the film must make do with the performers’ interactions, which is a problem when its characters are little more than narrative pawns.
Lacking a true center to its psychological and supernatural shenanigans, The Little Stranger might have worked better if someone other than the reedy, delicate Gleeson portrayed Faraday. Though the script might claim that he’s older than Caroline, Gleeson is too callow to convince as an experienced, salt-of-the-earth commoner, and the film takes after the pinched performance of its leading man. The screenplay makes gestures towards a feminist reading, as the paternalistic, over-protective Faraday ends up doing more harm than good in his relations with Caroline, but these moments pale in contrast to the good old-fashioned horror that too infrequently punctuates The Little Stranger‘s best moments: ominous markings that mysteriously appear on window sills, walls, and doors, or a breath-stopping bit in an abandoned nursery in which Rampling receives a call from the dead.
The Little Stranger concludes on a note of finality that settles the plot, although it doesn’t necessarily resolve the mystery — for a story that goes on and on about “something” malevolent at the heart of things, we’re never provided with a reason or rhyme behind all the evil. Having an enigma at the heart of a tale isn’t necessarily a fatal weakness; still, one can’t help but feel underwhelmed after nearly two hours of sluggish build-up when the finale delivers the equivalent of a tragic sigh. Abrahamson has subverted expectations before, but this is the first time the strictures of adaptation have defeated him; you wait for him to draw something moving, visceral or memorable from the material, in vain. The Little Stranger‘s atmosphere haunts, but little about the human element, save for Wilson’s performance, lingers.
