She might not be an obvious stereotype (her aloofness guarantees it) but she is never defined by anything than her beautiful face. Rose (Lucy Boynton), for example, the pretty popular girl who might be pregnant, feels like a walking after-school special. What we know about the characters is spelled out by dialogue and relies on our assumptions of high school stereotypes as we fill in the gaps of how a keener, a popular girl, and an outsider might behave.
CHRIS STUCKMANN BEST MOVIES 2017 MOVIE
Any sense of dread that the movie inspires comes from a kind of incompleteness, like a song being cut off before its final notes, rather than a sense of discomfort drawn from difficult ideas or feelings. Too much information is withheld without a sense of purpose, tipping the film too deeply into ambiguity and vagueness. The non-linear story fails to enrich the experience and only serves to obscure information in a cheap plea for suspense. The gap between the characters purported to be disturbed and those who are merely bystanders is too narrow, a failure of writing and direction rather than performance. Too much of the film’s mood and sense of character is defined by stilted aloofness, marked by awkward pauses and monotone line deliveries, robbing the film of variance and richness.
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Nearly every scene is built around a slow zoom or an awkward pause, and establishing shots focus on eerily framed empty classrooms, but that approach does little to disguise the film’s lack of substance.Īll three leads ( Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, and Lucy Boynton) are compelling to watch though they all seem restrained by a uniform tone. While set at a Catholic boarding school for girls, the full potential of that alien environment remains a convenient tool for isolation rather than a part of the film’s thematic structure. Perkins may have the sense to draw on a glacial winter environment as a mood setter but he fails to move beyond the surface. In spite of some compelling performances and a consistent mood, the film fails to ground any of these aesthetic flourishes in story or emotion.