ResurrectionIt is a dull, monotonous paranoiac thriller that doesn’t seem to know how to break out of its rut. With classy production values and a tony cast led by Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth, writer-director Andrew Semans’ first feature in a decade, since the similarly plotted Nancy, Please, grinds on trying to build suspense but doesn’t have much of a clue as to how to tease and tantalize an audience. This Sundance Premieres item is unlikely to be released theatrically.
Hall’s character goes from fear and concern to anger and legitimate paranoia as she struggles to control her emotions. This would make it impossible for any actor to perform the film on their own given the single-track emotional journey. There are no side stories or sub-plots, no nuances, or dark humor. This is a tedious journey that neither the characters nor the audience enjoy.
Hall’s presence in any role she plays confers an air of confidence and intelligence on the character. Margaret is a career woman with Abbie (Grace Kaufman), whose boyfriend isn’t treating her rightly and whose father is absent from sight.
In fact, there’s scarcely a trace of either happiness or stability for anyone in this story. Abbie gets a badly cut leg. Her mother insists that she stay home for her 18th Birthday. Margaret panics during a business conference and has a terrible vision of a pregnant woman in an oven. She then has bad sex. It’s a fun time all around.
To try to compensate for all the misery, Mom decides to teach her daughter how to really drink, which doesn’t exactly end in great merriment. Margaret spots a man in Albany New York’s department store that looks very much like Tim Roth. Margaret rushes Abbie to get her and soon she is thrown out at an office presentation. Margaret yells at the Tim Roth-like to leave when he appears in a park the next day. “Stay away from me and my kid.”
Even though the Roth fellow hasn’t yet done a thing, Semans throws in an entirely expository scene at a police station at which Margaret informs that she and this Roth fellow–who by now actually has a name, David–were once involved but split 22 years earlier, when she was 19. The next step for her is to get out her gun.
As the film progresses to a fight between David and Margaret, Margaret insists her ex killed their baby. Margaret also claims that she ate the baby. David’s diabolical position is that kid is still inside him and says that, “If you kill me, you kill him.”
Abbie, her daughter, is not patient with her mother. A sensible viewer might sympathize with her at this point. But the tale continues on for quite a while. The weird story, the relentless bad behavior and Margaret’s complicity in buying into David’s games makes for aggravating viewing and asks for a lot from audiences to buy into it all. This drama is not filled with plot twists and character revelations that you would find in a great thriller or mystery. The unvarying pace and tone of the story only increase viewer frustration.
It’s a thriller that’s no fun at all.