HOUSE OF PAIN
English manor hosts the weird in ‘Little Stranger’
Downton Abbey” as a ghost story might sound like a solid premise. But “The Little Stranger,” Lenny Abrahamson's followup to his wildly overrated Academy Award winner “Room” (2015), is such a vaporous nothing, I have already half forgotten it.
Based on the acclaimed 2009 Gothic novel by Welsh author Sarah Waters, and adapted by Lucinda Coxon (“The Danish Girl”), the film is set in newly post-World War II West Midlands village of Warwickshire. Summoned to the once grand, now fading manor house Hundreds Hall — it's now down to Fours Hall — young Dr. Faraday (omnipresent Domhnall Gleeson) treats a disturbed young maid named Betty (Liv Hill), one of the last servants of the eccentric Ayres family.
Faraday meets and strikes up a relationship with Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson with no makeup and wearing about seven bulky sweaters), an unmarried Ayres daughter, her severely scarred expilot brother Roderick (a shocking looking Will Poulter), whose name recalls the scion of a certain House of Usher, and their mother, Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), who looks like a deer caught in the headlights and remains a great beauty.
As it turns out, Faraday grew up in the village and his mother worked as a servant for the Ayres. He remembers a day that we see in flashback when he is allowed into the grand house and, devilish little wretch that he was (and is?), he tears off a woody protuberance from a picture frame as a keepsake.
As a medical doctor whose skills are called upon regularly and who tries to help
Roderick further heal from his horrendous injuries,
Faraday becomes more familiar with the
Ayres. In one scene, part medieval, part medical, Faraday hooks Roderick up to a primitive TENS machine. In another, the Ayres family dog viciously attacks a little girl.
Parts of the estate are being sold off and an angry spirit appears to make its presence known in creaky Hundreds Hall.
Mrs. Ayres uncovers childish writing all over some walls, reading “Su, Su, Su.” I thought it might be the ghost of Phil Collins' “Sussudio.” The maid's bells start firing off at random. An ancient communication tube connected to the nursery of daughter Susan, who died of diphtheria at age 8, breathes.
Faraday and Caroline announce plans to marry on a very inauspicious day. It's the whole “Old Dark House” bit, but without Boris Karloff's insane butler, unfortunately. I couldn't summon much enthusiasm for Caroline and Dr. Faraday's upstairs/downstairs romance, and the little ghost of the title struck me as a little bore. Boo, yourself.