Resurrection review: a bonkers horror thriller anchored by a killer performance

ResurrectionA monologue of seven minutes that transforms the film into a primal and strange psychological thriller is its foundation. Andrew Semans, writer and director of this film has a tricky tonal strategy. And the whole thing simply wouldn’t work without Night House’s Rebecca Hall. In Hall’s capable hands, that monologue is laden with dread. In one unbroken shot, her character, Margaret, gives the audience some crucial context by relaying a story from her past — the type of story that makes viewers’ stomachs drop to their knees. You might find it funny, as most people will laugh at it.

Margaret is an executive in the pharmaceutical industry who looks great with her slicked-back bob. She is a single mother to Abbie, her daughter Grace Kaufman (17 years old). Abbie’s father is not, and has never been, in the picture. But that’s fine, because the hyper-competent Margaret has always been more than enough parent for her only child. Margaret, who has a rigid personality to the point where she is almost a masochist, doesn’t even have any friends except for an affair that was unattached with a married colleague. It’s a way she enjoys. Margaret is beginning to lose control of her life as Abbie prepares to leave for college.

It’s debatable whether what happens next is actually real, or whether some (or even all) of it is in Margaret’s mind. This could be part of Abbie’s psychotic break. It may also result from her growing up without her mother. Semans plays it straight, launching into a stone-faced series of increasingly unsettling events that begins when Margaret spies David (Tim Roth) sitting in on a presentation at a conference she’s attending for work. She is overcome with panic and rushes to leave the room. Her heart beats fast and her breathing slows.

IFC Films – Photo

Margaret started to notice David wherever she went. He confronts her, and she tells him to keep away from her and her children. But he persists, lingering at the edges of her peripheral vision, just far enough away that she can’t file a restraining order. To Margaret, he’s a ghost from her past whose mere presence is enough to paralyze her with fear. Her reactions are so dramatic that it’s difficult not to wonder if he is, in fact, possessed of some malevolent supernatural power.

Semans films David’s early appearances like the stolen glimpses of Michael Myers in the first half of John Carpenter’s Halloween — something evil spotted out of the corner of the eye, the vague shape of a predator that ignites the flight-or-flight response in the animal part of the brain. David is a master of psychological and emotional abuse, and he’s returned with the intention of getting his hooks back into Margaret by giving her something she desperately wants.

Roth plays David with an eerie sense of calm, manipulating Margaret and steadily undermining both her self-esteem and her sense of reality with the nonchalant air of a man who’s ordering breakfast. (One scene takes place in a diner, making this demonstration of the banality of David’s evil entirely literal.) Hall, on the other hand, plays her role like she’s being torn apart from the inside out. As she turns from being self-assured to a scared little girl, the mask of normality almost melts away. Her eyes glitter. Her skin is dull. Her movements seem uncertain. Margaret has been knocked out of her orbit by a man she thought she’d never see again, and Hall brings a pathos to her character’s disintegration that gives this increasingly bonkers story the emotional core it needs to be even marginally believable.

The end is marked by a gory scene. ResurrectionThis film pushes the boundaries of suspension of belief further than most viewers are willing to accept. On its surface, this is a woman-losing-her-grip thriller in the mold of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. Resurrection plays with the audience’s sense of reality by presenting the story from Margaret’s increasingly delusional point of view.

IFC Films – Photo

But occasionally, Semans abruptly pulls back from this subjectivity to a more detached gaze, presenting jaw-dropping events in an offhanded tone that’s designed to make viewers question whether they can trust their own eyes and ears. This whiplash combines with horror techniques — particularly a steadily escalating sense of dread and panic — to evoke the fractured consciousness of a gaslighting victim. The approach works much more effectively than Semans’ clunky attempts to work #MeToo into the text of the film, and it makes for a viewing experience that LooksAs dramatic as a play. It feels goodLike a horror film. David is both the boogeyman and just a man, a distressing dichotomy that’s also true of real-life abusers.

ResurrectionIt is likely to cause division. It’s actively trying to provoke its audience, which some might find more upsetting than anything that actually happens in the film. And that’s fair enough. But whether or not it’s to anyone’s particular taste, the fact remains that this is an audacious film that asks viewers to take its hand and come along to some particularly dark, surreal, and grotesque places. Throughout that descent, it holds on with a grip that’s tight enough to keep it from spinning out into ridiculousness. This is an amazing feat.

ResurrectionThe film opens in theatres Friday, July 29th and is available on demand rental starting on August 5.