Mark Reviews Movies: NANCY DREW AND THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 15, 2019

The best thing about this new version of the beloved teenage detective Nancy Drew is that she doesn't feel new. In a world of modern technology, in which almost the entirety of available information known to humanity is accessible on a cellphone, this character comes across as an anachronism. Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase could have played that as a joke, but smartly, it doesn't. The film likes Nancy just the way she is, was, and has been in the minds of readers for almost 90 years—clever, a bit rebellious, dedicated to logic, uncaring of what other people might think of her.

It only makes sense, then, that the character, created by the pseudonymous author Carolyn Keene (a product of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its hired ghostwriters, although Mildred Wirt Benson actually wrote the 1930 book upon which this adaptation in based), wouldn't care if she seems out of place in the modern world. She has never seemed part of her contemporary world. That's part of the character's charm.

That charm comes through quite clearly in this new version of the character, in which she solves a mystery that appeared in the series' second published book—one that just happens to be the same as one of the character's first appearances on screen 80 years ago. This time, Nancy is played by Sophia Lillis, whose performance is so naturalistic that you start to wonder if the actress goes around solving mysteries with a bit of a devil-may-care attitude in her spare time.

There are a few things about the character in Nina Fiore and John Herrera's screenplay that modernize her—but only a few. We first see her riding and doing tricks on a skateboard down the street of the small town of River Heights, where she and her father moved from Chicago after the death of Nancy's mother. She has access to a cellphone, of course, because she's a teenager in the present day. It's a sign of Nancy's personality, though, that she mostly uses it to make phone calls (I know, right!) or send text messages.

Technology does figure into Nancy's first mystery, when her friend Bess (Mackenzie Graham) is bullied online with a video, mocking her appearance. The video has gone viral around the school, and George (Zoe Renee), her other friend, knows that only Nancy has the mind to figure out who shot and edited the video. She does, using the bully's reflection in a window. Seeing a wrong in need of being made right, Nancy sets up an elaborate prank involving a showerhead, time-activated dye, and the rich and spoiled football player's tendency for flirting with girls who aren't his girlfriend.

After being arrested ("It's not a felony unless you're over 18," Nancy points out) and mildly chastised by her father Carson (Sam Trammell), the junior sleuth/bully-avenger is punished with community service. While cleaning up trash outside the police station, she overhears the complaints of an older woman named Flora (Linda Lavin), the great-aunt of the bully's girlfriend Helen (Laura Wiggins). She insists that her house is haunted by the ghosts of murderer and his victims. Spotting a mystery to be solved, Nancy offers to help the woman.

Around the time that Nancy begins her investigation of the allegedly haunted house, we probably have noticed that this isn't exactly case of fine filmmaking. The outside scenes have the defining characteristic of being bright, and the interiors are dreary. They're not that way in terms of being atmospheric, as one would expect from a haunted house, but simply dark and drab. Director Katt Shea relies almost exclusively on close-ups of characters, giving the whole affair the sense of something shot cheaply and quickly. It matters, obviously, but mostly because a sense of actual atmosphere—the everyday ordinariness of this little town and the potentially frightening nature of the house—could have gone a long way in making the storytelling match the depiction of the central character.

The good news, though, is that Shea, the screenwriters, and Lillis never lose sight of what makes this particular character special. Witnessing a variety of seemingly inexplicable occurrences (strange noises, loud music, and lights going out, before brightening and then exploding in a rain of sparks), Nancy keeps her head while Flora and Helen are startled. The most telling moment, which solidifies that this is the Nancy Drew we expect, is when she spots a moving shadow, supposedly the ghost of some pig-faced murderer, and darts after it without a second thought.

The mystery of the haunted house is explained away with the discovery of a series of secret rooms and some other things. Like the portrayal of the character, it's refreshing how quaint the mystery and the secrets behind it actually are. The same can be said of a running subplot, in which Carson is fighting against the building of a new train line into River Heights, as well as how the story's biggest conflict—until the climax, of course—is between Nancy's new friend/enemy Helen, who's torn between what she wants and what her peers expect of her, and the sleuth's best friends, who don't trust Helen's intentions.

This new Nancy Drew adventure feels just modern enough but mostly of a more innocent age of storytelling, when courage and cleverness were enough to figure out any mystery. Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase counts on that combination of innocence and sincerity, and it pays off.

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