The Little Stranger (Review)
The Little Stranger is a Little Strange for a Horror Film.
Those expecting to get a lot of scares new haunted house movie The Little Stranger will probably be greatly disappointed with the film. Instead on relying on jump scares and spooky specters, The Little Stranger is all about the atmosphere. In a lot of ways, it has the reserved nature of a classic BBC time period piece. While there are certainly plenty of creepy moments in the film, it’s a far cry from the likes of Winchester and other haunted house films we’ve gotten recently. The thing is I’m not quite sure if that’s a good thing or not.
The biggest problem with The Little Stranger is that it has glacial pacing. The story moves along at the speed you might expect from a garden snail. However, this just gives audiences more time to get to know the characters afflicted by the menacing spirit inhabiting the sprawling mansion the film takes place in. At the center of the story is a local doctor played by Domhnall Gleeson. He’s the type of stiff upper lip gentleman that the British prided themselves on during and following the Second World War. The type of man who tells you to pull yourself together and stop all the nonsense. In other words, exactly the type of character you might expect to find in a haunted house film. He’s the sort of man who chooses to ignore all things outside the realm of science and chalks most things up to minds playing tricks.
It’s hard to tell if The Little Stranger is a horror film or a character study. Much of the movie revolves around the obsession Gleeson has with the sprawling mansion Hundred Halls Manor. It’s a place he’s coveted ever since he was a child walking by its gates every day. Because of this obsession, it’s hard to tell if he implants himself in the affairs of the home because he genuinely cares for the inhabitants or because it’s simply his “precious.” Most of The Little Strangers revolves around the odd relationship between Gleeson’s Doctor Faraday and Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson), who is the young woman living in Hundred Halls with her mother (Charlotte Rampling) and shell-shocked brother (Josh Dylan). Their relationship is a bit of a mystery though as the two of them aren’t quite sure how to react to everything going on around them.
As far as a period piece, The Little Stranger is a damn good film. It certainly captures the tone of the time and all the actors manage to disappear into their roles. Set in the late 40’s there’s enough technology for cars and lights, but not enough to make the characters feel safe from whatever it is going bump in the night. In this regards, it’s the atmosphere that makes The Little Stranger so chilling. It’s hard to hide from the dark when the lights are hardly reliable. This also serves to fuel Dr. Faraday’s skepticism. As a doctor, it would be shameful for him to believe in the supernatural. However, at a certain point, the audience starts to question if the happenings are the result of the supernatural or obsession. Perhaps though it might even be both.
What I enjoyed/ hated most about The Little Stranger is its refusal to answer any questions. It certainly throws out plenty of theories as to what the cause of the events happening in the house might be, but never spoon feeds the answer to the audience. Since the truth is never fully revealed in the film a lot is left up to audiences to piece together. I know I certainly have my theory as to what might have happened in the film, but who knows if I actually figured it out. Then again, I could have just been having a slow day at the theaters. It certainly didn’t help that The Little Stranger is so slow to get to the real meat of the story. Because of its meandering, the actual supernatural events feel few and far between, making it difficult for that side of the movie to really gain any traction. In doing so it gives the audience room to really focus on the psychology and motivation of not just the protagonist, but of all the characters involved in the story. Luckily, the acting is as solid as it comes. Everyone plays their part perfectly and the film goes off mostly hitchless. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t lag from time to time.
While it’s certainly an easy movie to follow and get into the flow of, The Little Stranger is a bit on the boring side. It feels like all the elements are there to make a truly memorable horror movie, but director Lenny Abrahamson never exploits that aspect of the story. There’s no emphasis on what genre the film should fall under and because of that, I don’t think it’s a very successful horror movie. As a period piece and a character study, it certainly does well for itself. However, that’s not what I was looking for what I went into the theater because that’s not what was sold to me in trailers. It’s because of that I have to warn audiences beforehand. While The Little Stranger is technically a horror movie, don’t expect a lot of scares from it. Taking that out of the equation though, this isn’t such a bad little movie. A bit slow, a bit boring, but not bad.
