THE WASP - Mark Reviews Movies

The Wasp, Shout! Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 29, 2024

The Wasp leaves a sour aftertaste—not only because of what happens with the last of its many turns, but also because each new shift in the narrative holds some intriguing promise. Screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, adapting her stage play, doesn't fulfill it, especially with its finale—a fact that can't be asserted enough.

The initial premise seems like a perfectly ordinary, if rather dysfunctional, domestic drama about Heather (Naomie Harris). She lives in some English town, in a cozy two-story home, and a on pleasant street with her husband Simon (Dominic Allburn).

The first sign that something isn't right comes in the form of a wasp, buzzing around the kitchen and irritating Heather as she does some housework. After she traps the insect under a glass, director Guillem Morales' camera moves up toward the windowsill, where a pile of dead wasps lie.

The whole scene, as well as the presence of a wasp nest somewhere in the house and left to build without Simon doing anything about it, is a metaphor, of course, for the marriage and how much is buzzing around inside Heather's mind. When it comes up again in the movie's final moments, it's just a good reason to recall just how far down the material has gone from this on-the-nose but engaging introduction.

At a certain point here, a description of the plot will have to stop, obviously, and that stopping point will be before the story reveals the third of its setups. There are at least two more in store for the narrative after that, though, and that should give one an idea of how often this story changes over the course of a mere 90 minutes. It changes, for sure, but Malcolm seems hesitant to let any of the ideas within it evolve, because the whole game is just trying to keep us on our toes.

Initially, it's about Heather and Simon's marriage, which is struggling in general and because Heather wants to but can't become pregnant. At first, it seems to be because Simon is so distracted by work and staying out late to do his part of the process, but the reality is a revelation tied so closely to the fourth twist that it probably shouldn't be mentioned. Yes, such vagueness is frustrating for a reader, but imagine trying to dance around such an important detail of a character, her motivation, and the entire second half of a movie, just to preserve some sense of a surprise that, ultimately, only results in disappointment.

Anyway, Heather finally decides to contact Carla (Natalie Dormer), a friend from childhood who sticks in Heather's memory for a few reasons. Most of them, again, can't be described here, but the one that we're allowed to know from the start is when a young Carla put an injured pigeon out of its misery. Decades later, Carla works at a grocery store, has four children of various ages, and is pregnant with a future fifth. She has an older boyfriend, who isn't much help or use, and she's desperate for money.

The two catch up on their lives at a local café, although Heather wants something from her—a favor that she'll make worth Carla's while if the former friend performs it. Since there's bad blood between them from all that time ago, Carla hesitates to even hear the offer, but Heather pressures her to listen, because she's desperate, too.

What can be said of anything that follows that moment is that Harris and Dormer are quite good here, playing characters whose old resentments and, because to use certain words might give away something, much more linger, stew, and put a genuine feeling of tension between Heather and Carla at every moment. The tension is much easier and less convincing later, when the plot becomes one kind of thriller, involving the planning of a scheme, and, soon enough, a completely different sort of one, as Heather's other memories—ones that would seem to be more on her mind than a violent scene with a dying pigeon—serve as the foundation of what happens later. Of course, Carla has her own memories of these things, which makes one wonder why she'd agree to anything Heather would suggest.

These are questions the filmmakers don't want us to ask, and in a certain way, the shocks of the two major shifts in the plot do keep some of them at bay for a bit. The Wasp, though, is so eager to surprise and distract us from its contrived setups that the movie stops well short of examining these complex characters and their relationship. It's just a questionable and exploitative piece of shallow gamesmanship.

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