The Turning
THE TURNING - UNIVERSAL + eOne
In the height of the recently acclaimed resurgence of the horror genre — with Hereditary, Midsommar, US, Doctor Sleep, It, and Climax to name a few — The Turning is nothing short of a disgrace. A tonally flat and inconsequential ride of the most unremarkable horror imaginable.
The long-gesturing horror, modern adaptation of the 1898 ghost story The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is a total waste of ninety minutes. Eighty-seven of those un-ironic, daunting minutes of excruciating boredom sees infuriatingly predictable jump scares, flat performances all round and a zinger of a left-field twist so stupid and felonious it solidifies this feature as a barren, pathetic attempt at horror that should have never been gifted a cinema release.
Starting as it means to go on, The Turning churns out every single generic conventional trope imaginable, even repeating such elements in one scene on occasion. Once the second wave of trope hits after the ten-minute mark, audiences — subconsciously or not — begin to feel the weight of regurgitation in its most dense and suffocating fashion. Before long, nothing can keep this feature from drowning in not only its own pathetic runtime but a condescending matter of conviction — being as cheap, lifeless and dull as they come.
Mackenzie Davis is arguably the most interesting aspect involved with her performances as Kate Mandell. A character that is defined as looking at mirrors, running around the grounds and shaking in dark corridors. However, it is the only thing that remotely sticks with everything else so shallow and uninteresting regarding characters. It is hard to identify much of any positives when everything is poorly crafted.
To her credit, Davis expertly conveys emotional fatigue and the portrayal of said depiction is the lifeblood of what keeps this feature from being a walkout. That being said, the actress is working with a terrible screenplay from Carey W. Hayes and Chad Hayes, of whom write the same scene over and over again in different locations and solely rely on Davis managing to keep it fresh or compelling for the film to sustain engagement, which the actress sadly can not carry the weight to no fault of her own.
Finn Wolfhard and Brooklynn Prince round out the cast, with the latter once again giving an excellent performance on her rollercoaster ride since Sean Baker's The Florida Project. Prince is charming, charismatic and in a split second can turn the atmosphere on its head with a terrific, evocative sentence. Wolfhard, on the other hand, causes a headache throughout. The actor does not have the dramatic range for the intended array of his character, coming off tremendously flat and laughably inconsequential in his screen presence. This results in an integral piece of the puzzle not being able to pull its dramatic weight and, once again, sinking with the pressure of lifeless and over the top character akin to his role in The Goldfinch.
Nevertheless, the crescendo of this disaster is the patronsing ending. A left-field and undeserved, out-of-nowhere twist that is quite clearly a last-minute addition to find a "compelling" way to bring an engaging climax to the story. It does neither, however, with it causing not only a headache with its result but is the most absurd and senseless twist imaginable.
THE TURNING is released January 24th 2020
