THE TURNING

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 94 minutes

Director Floria Sigismondi Cast Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, Brooklynn Prince, Barbara Marten

The foreboding gothic

mansion in director Floria Sigismondi’s new adaptation of Henry James’s horror classic The Turn Of The Screw is the sort of workplace that would give anyone the heebie-jeebies the minute they arrive, with its unforgiving architecture, decrepit artwork and darkened no-go zones. Dispatched to act as governess for young Flora Fairchild (Brooklynn Prince), who lost her parents in a car accident she witnessed, Mackenzie Davis’s Kate Mandell nevertheless sticks around, shivering her way through all the tragic ambience the place has to offer.

It’s an equally brave filmmaker who looks to tackle a story that has been brought to screens before (Jack Clayton’s respected 1961 effort The Innocents stands out from the numerous examples), and while Sigismondi gives her film plenty of atmosphere, the attempt to emulate James’s realitytwisting original narrative reaches for something it never quite achieves, and is likely to generate more frustration than genuine engagement. Davis and the young actors (Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard plays Flora’s petulant, haunted older brother Miles) do what they can, but the script – from Conjuring writer siblings Chad and Carey Hayes – soon starts to let them down, swapping a creeping sense of unease for familiar scare tactics. Jim Blakey