Director Lenny Abrahamson talks filmmaking

Lenny Abrahamson knows the type of characters who don’t know themselves.

Consider the eponymous musician in “Frank” (2014) or heroin junkies “Adam & Paul” (2004), or Ma in the director’s Oscar-nominated feature, “Room” (2015). And now we have Dr. Faraday, narrator and protagonist of “The Little Stranger.”

“I think there are strong things in common, right? Like, they are all characters who are often blind to who they really are. They are at odds with themselves, but actually, I like the idea of characters who are kind of lost or somehow childlike in some way,” he said in a recent phone interview.

Mr. Abrahamson reunited with fellow Dubliner, “Frank” star Domhnall Gleeson for a film that in tone is “Frank’s” polar opposite.

“I really love working with him, we have great fun,” Mr. Abrahamson said. “He has a great sense of humor, even in the toughest stuff we do. We have a really good laugh, which keeps everybody sane.”

It only seems as if the versatile Mr. Gleeson was in every major film released in the past four years, from “Star Wars” to “Peter Rabbit,” “The Revenant,” “Ex Machina,” “Brooklyn” and “About Time.” Throw in one of “Black Mirror’s” most gut-wrenching

episodes while you’re at it.

“He’s a very intelligent judge of script and story, so he’s a collaborator in that way, in quite the full sense of the term,” the director said. “Domhnall finds the emotional kind of engine very smoothly. But he’s also able to think more globally and critically about the film and his performance.”

“The Little Stranger” is based on Sarah Waters’ Man Booker Prize finalist novel, where, in post-World War II England, a formerly grand manor is marked by tragedy and loss.

Mr. Gleeson plays Faraday, a country boy whose mother worked for the Ayres family at Hundreds Hall during its heyday. He escapes his poor roots to become a respected young doctor. More than three decades later, Faraday returns to Hundreds to treat the lone remaining servant. Things get weird, quickly. It would be a crime to detail the slowly building terrors in “The Little Stranger,” and as with the book, the ending is a subject for debate. Mr. Abrahamson has a firm grip on the emotional reins, however, and prevents what might have become an over-the-top 1940s “Amityville Horror” story.

“The Little Stranger” is grounded in Faraday, who is seen as a staunch yet empathetic physician. Yet it toys with the idea he might be an unreliable narrator.

“There is a kind of longing in Faraday, which I find very moving. There is also that commitment to — and I think others may disagree — a certain valuing of people’s humanity, no matter how bad the things they do are, or how damaged or damaging they are.

“I feel the film has, ultimately, a sort of very subtle, tender hold on its characters, which is something I would say goes through all of [my] films.”

The small cast of characters inhabiting Hundreds include matriarch Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), and her children, the spinster Caroline (Ruth Wilson) and Roderick (Will Poulter), who is suffering from physical wounds as well as “war shock.”

“It was a lovely cast. I know everybody always says the cast was great, but it isn’t great,” Mr. Abrahamson said with a laugh. “This was actually a lovely ensemble of people who were very lowkey and so invested in the project.”

Mr. Abrahamson said he probably will move on to some small projects in his native Ireland, but has, of all things, American history on his mind. The true tale of Emil Griffith, a world champion boxer from the U.S. Virgin Islands “is a really big, important story,” he said.

Mr. Griffith was bisexual, which made him the subject of controversy later in his career. He died in 2013. Another property, Laird Hunt’s novel “Neverhome,” also interests Mr. Abrahamson. It’s about a strong-willed Civil War-era wife who disguises herself as a man to fight for the Union army.

“Going back in history may be a way of getting rid of some of the noise that’s happening right now,” he said. In Dublin, it’s safe and boring “in a way that I think is just fabulous.”

He has that wish for America.

“We need more boring times.”