The Little Stranger

By: Arlene Allen

I was excited to hear about The Little Stranger. After all, it’s based on the chilling, well-acclaimed book by Sarah Waters. It’s a haunted house book, psychologically macabre. Unfortunately, what we end up getting with director Lenny Abrahamson’s snail-paced film is a whole lot of pretty scenery, unlikeable characters and a head-scratcher of an ending.

Hundreds House has belonged to the Ayres family for generations. Now, after WWII, it’s mostly a crumbling ruin inhabited by only by the elderly Mrs. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), her severely disfigured son Roderick (Will Poulter), her daughter Caroline (Ruth Wilson) and their terrified housemaid Betty (Liv Hill). When their regular physician is away, young Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) comes in to treat Betty, who pleads with the doctor to find her ill enough to send her home. There’s something bad around the house, she says.

But Dr. Faraday finds her fit as a fiddle and takes this as his opportunity to worm his way into a household he’s been obsessed with since he was a little boy as his mother – a former maid at the estate – took him to a party at the mansion in its heyday.  The viewer is constantly reminded how much Faraday loved that house in a scene that repeats itself over and over (and over and over) again in which he breaks off an acorn from a piece of wall molding.

Suddenly everyone needs his help – Rod, with his burns who believes he will never be fully mobile again; Mrs. Ayres, who is haunted by the ghost of her long dead first daughter, and Caroline, a spinster whose sole companion is a friendly black lab. Sinister things begin to happen – weird fires, unexplained markings along the windows and bells ringing when there’s no one to ring them. Is Faraday the catalyst? Or is he going as crazy as everyone else in the house seems to be?

I don’t want to give away any spoilers for those who do decide to give the movie a chance. There is actually quite a good story being told here and if you make it to the end without nodding off and figure out who “the little stranger” actually is, you’ll be rewarded.  But the pacing is just so unwieldy and pendulous. Sometimes the slow burn of a novel does not translate well to the screen and I think that’s what happened in this case.

As with almost everything filmed in England, the countryside is beautiful and there’s no slouching on the part of the cinematography.  The cast is great and strong in their roles. It’s certainly not their fault that they’re portraying a person utterly unlikeable. I barely noticed the soundtrack; I was too busy willing this film would just hurry up and go somewhere.  Ultimately, it doesn’t and that’s a shame. It does the novel no justice at all.