Mark Reviews Movies: THE TURNING (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 24, 2020

Those who remember Henry James' The Turn of the Screw probably recall it for the debate about the reality of the story. Were the ghosts actually real, or were they simply the creation of the narrator's mind? That has been the debate around the tale almost since it was first serialized in 1898.

The fraternal screenwriting team of Carey and Chad Hayes clearly had that debate in mind with their version of James' novella. It's called The Turning, and while the screenwriters know about the original story's ambiguity, they're obviously hoping that the book has fallen out of favor with high schools in recent years.

Their adaptation, directed by Floria Sigismondi, treats the novella's central question as an opportunity to throw away any ambiguity. Then, just for one more sudden and barely established twist, the filmmakers throw away all of that potential uncertainty one more time.

The key issue is that someone—either the filmmakers themselves or some executive(s) at a studio—didn't trust the source material. There's no rule that a movie adaptation has to stay true to its original source, but this one is just cowardly in its approach.

It wants the doubt that James instilled into his narrative, but the movie also spends most of its run time working from the assumption that this grand manor, where a teacher has come to educate an orphaned 7-year-old girl, is haunted by some specters of the mansion's recent past. The doubt is an afterthought, and even then, it isn't actually doubt. The movie's finale transforms the entire story into one that doesn't even matter, really—if we're to take the hastily assembled and even more hastily concluded ending at face value.

The teacher is Kate (Mackenzie Davis), who takes the job at a remote estate to escape the pressure of the classroom and to try to forget her mother (played by Joely Richardson), who is institutionalized for some unspecified mental health issues, if only for a while. Her student is Flora (Brooklynn Prince, a natural actor), whose parents were killed in a car accident just outside the gate of the property. Flora's brother Miles (Finn Wolfhard) is away at boarding school, but he makes an unexpected return one night, while Kate is wandering around the mansion.

She does that quite often, thinking that she has seen some passing figure in the shadows. After all, that's the expectation as soon as Kate sees her first ghost—a woman whose face, frozen in a scream, is seen briefly hovering in a window.

There's plenty of reason to be irritated by the filmmakers' conversion of the book, which used a first-person narrative to make us question everything that happens, into a straightforward ghost story. Objective shots of certain incidents all but confirm that the ghosts are real, especially since the screenplay offers no real reason to doubt Kate's state of mind (There is the quick and quickly forgotten introduction of her mother, but if we're to assume something from that, it raises a few other problems for the movie).

To harp on that contentious point of an adaptation's purpose, though, would be unfair. No, the real issue is that this is just a by-the-numbers scare machine, which wholly relies sequences of Kate being scared out of her wits by assorted visions (Sigismondi at least offers some subtle creepiness to offset the jump-scares).

In the process, the movie bypasses the difficult relationships within the house. Miles looks down on Kate, even while making uncomfortable advances toward and statements about her, and the housekeeper, played by Barbara Marten, thinks she should know her socioeconomic place amidst this privilege. The cheery, friendly Flora even resents Kate later, when the teacher briefly ignores the girl's traumatic reaction to approaching the estate's gate.

The reason for all of this, of course, is the presence of the ghosts, whose story of a creepy stalker terrorizing Kate's predecessor is discomforting in all the wrong ways (It's exploitative, primarily, and then there's the suggestion that Miles might have been too close to whatever the man was doing). As the story builds to its climax, the ghosts become more tangible, capable of interacting with Kate and even being seen by the kids, who deny the obvious.

Then, that final revelation comes, and all of this generic and routine material is shoved aside for a truly dumbfounding move. The final twist of The Turning is lazy on too many levels to count. The main ones, though, are that it comes out of nowhere and that it renders the entire story meaningless.

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