Like Lenny Abrahamson‘s previous two movies, “Room” and “Frank,” “The Little Stranger” is a study in restraint. A bare bones description of the film – a doctor discovers strange occurrences at an English estate in the 1940s – makes it sound like high-brow horror, but the filmmaker has far more on his mind than simple scares. Adapted from Sarah Waters‘ novel, “The Little Stranger” instead explores tension created not only by the supernatural, but also by the changing balance of power in postwar Britain.
Hundreds Hall was once a picturesque manor house, brimming with vitality and aristocracy. But the years haven’t been kind to the home and its inhabitants, as Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) discovers when he arrives there in 1948, three decades after his first visit as a boy when his mother worked there. Instead of the lively estate he experienced in his childhood, Hundreds Hall is quiet, with only the Ayres family and a single servant left on its grounds. Faraday is called to help that maid, who is feels ill and is desperate for an escape from the suffocating air of the place, but it’s Roderick Ayres (Will Poulter) who initially brings Faraday back for subsequent visits. Roderick bears the scars and a limp from the war, and the doctor thinks he can alleviate some of his symptoms with a new treatment.
However, it’s Roderick’s sister, Caroline (Ruth Wilson), who becomes the real draw for Faraday as he keeps returning to the house. He and Caroline connect, with the new social order – and the Ayres’ financial struggles – erasing much of their class differences. But the more time Faraday spends with Caroline, Roderick and their mother (Charlotte Rampling), he begins to realize that there is more troubling them than just money and even family tragedy. Roderick’s mental health deteriorates and he blames a presence in the home, which begins leaving physical signs of its existence.
Gleeson’s ease with playing both heroes and villains works well here. Faraday means well, but there’s uncertainty around his motivations and his methods, and Gleeson captures our empathy and our curiosity. Wilson is exquisite in expressing her character’s discomfort, both in her own home and in her uncertain relationship with Faraday. Poulter is required to give the film’s biggest performance – both physically and emotionally – and the young actor meets the challenge, without ever throwing the movie off balance. Rampling is great as always, with a brittleness that points to Mrs. Ayres’ lingering grief.
From its first moments, “The Little Stranger” places an import on sound that isn’t usually a focus of period dramas (though it is certainly a hallmark of horror). With the thuds of footfalls on ancient wooden floors and the rasp of a razor on skin, each aspect of the sound design and mixing contributes to the audience’s heightened awareness of what’s happening on screen and what’s wrong with not only Hundreds Hall but the characters present there.
“The Little Stranger” seems unconcerned with genre conventions, which has to have made things difficult for distributor Focus Features on the marketing side. The film’s trailer leans into its horror elements, but this isn’t a movie about scares. Instead, there’s a constant unease in this gothic drama, an eeriness that keeps it from just being a drama about class in 1940s Britain, but it never gives the jump scares or the terror that most horror fans crave. With its release on August 31 and a late-breaking embargo to keep critics quiet, one might assume that “The Little Stranger” is a dud, particularly given how little promotion the film has received. Labor Day Weekend is often seen as a dumping ground for bad movies, the ones that studios don’t have confidence in, but this is unfair to Abrahamson’s film. Its pace is sometimes a bit too plodding, but that doesn’t seem to be unintentional on Abrahamson’s part.
Other directors might have leaned too hard in either direction, playing up the supernatural elements of the film or making it into a pure melodrama about class in the post-war era. But Abrahamson, along with screenwriter Lucinda Coxon, has created something else entirely – and something special. This is a subtle, slow burn of a film that refuses to bow to audience expectations in either its small moments or its overall arc. [B+]