Things heard and seen book author12/2/2023 ![]() ![]() The story heads in some fairly over-the-top directions as the unexpected reveals pile up, but by fully blending a supernatural horror story with a dreary marital drama, writer-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini ( American Splendor, The Nanny Diaries) kick some fresh energy into both genres, and steer them away from the usual predictable structures. In this particular fantasy, ghosts are specifically drawn toward people who mirror them in some ways, and Catherine’s ghost may be responding to her troubled marriage. As one visitor tells Catherine, evil spirits are only drawn to evil people, which means unless she’s harboring evil herself, the ghost that’s trying to make contact with her is a kind and benevolent one. The way the narrative falls apart is a particular shame, since for much of its run, the film is a compelling melodrama, an “elevated horror” story that limits the cheap shocks and jump scares, and replaces them with its own unusual rules for the supernatural. The otherworldly force in the house is drawn to their conflict and their resentments - or possibly is feeding it? That’s one of the things that’s manifestly unclear right up to the abrupt, baffling ending. Meanwhile, she’s gaslighting him about her eating disorder, and concealing how miserable she is while also finding reasons to be passive-aggressively unkind to him. He’s a liar and a cheat who blames his choices on her behavior. Catherine and George’s marriage looks an awful lot like the similarly fraying relationship in Sean Durkin’s The Nest, with a fair percentage of The Talented Mister Ripley sprinkled in. Things Heard & Seen, based on Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Things Cease to Appear, spends most of its runtime building an unconventional ghost story out of an entirely conventional relationship drama. Murray Abraham, always enjoyable) gives her his warm and supportive theories on spiritualism, she’s immediately in favor of a seance - with George, a disdainful cynic, distinctly not invited. ![]() She immediately starts to sympathize with the household ghost, and when George’s boss Floyd (F. But one thing that’s immediately unusual in Things Heard & Seen is that Catherine doesn’t seem particularly unnerved by the apparition or the effects. The slow-burn ghost story that follows starts out according to the usual haunted-house rules, at least in most respects: Electric lights flicker, Franny sees a mysterious female figure in her room, objects around the house move without being touched, and so forth. It turns out that she’s right to be unnerved by his insistence on the house: The place has seen some horrors, and there’s an active supernatural presence there. There’s clearly something wrong in Catherine’s life, given that she’s starving herself and forcing herself to vomit up what food she does eat, and even early on, she flinches as, for instance, George picks out their new home in the tiny town of Chosen, pressuring her when she shows even token resistance. Catherine has a satisfying job as an expert art restorer, but when George announces to their friends that he’s completed his dissertation and has been offered a teaching job at a private college in upstate New York, she drops her career meekly, without complaint, telling a close friend that she owes George her support. And as a metaphor, it’s the most consistent and compelling thing in a bizarrely confused movie.Īmanda Seyfried and The Nevers’ James Norton star as Catherine and George Claire, a married couple raising a 4-year-old daughter, Franny, in 1980 Manhattan. In a movie like Netflix’s baffling new horror-drama Things Heard & Seen, the haunted house is a metaphor as much as a horror device, a symbol of a place that should be a warm, protective home but isn’t, and an emblem of a commitment that’s difficult to escape. ![]() But a house represents a commitment, a sunk cost that’s extremely difficult to walk away from. And people being threatened by something they don’t understand, whether it’s a curse or a creature, can always investigate and try to come to terms with the unknown. Horror-movie protagonists dealing with an evil doll can at least try to get rid of it slasher victims can at least try to run away from the danger. Look a little deeper at just about any decent haunted-house movie, and you’ll almost always see a story about people who feel trapped by some larger aspect of their lives. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |