A young woman quits her teaching job to be a private tutor (governess) for a wealthy young heiress who witnessed her parent's tragic death. Shortly after arriving, the girl's degenerate brother is...
Universal Studios have been taking massive L after massive L recently with the releases of films like Cats and Dolittle but as of right now, “The Turning” might be the biggest L they’ll have yet to take in so far this year. It has solid acting, cinematography and editing, as well as an admittly creepy atmosphere to boot and just like the book it’s based on, it offers an intimate sense of confusion and suspense within the viewer but the overall intention of that end result doesn’t matter because this is basically a nothing story. Nothing happens of any importance, it barely has meaning, there’s almost no characters. All of it is legitimate style over substance for one, there isn’t an attempt at variety as far as the story goes, it is literally crawling with cliches everywhere, any kind of cleverness in its themes or scenes are stuck in a vessel that’s executed poorly, the pacing on second thought is rather long for 90 minutes and whatever plot threads it builds up it just aborts either halfway through or by the time we get to the—I want to say ending but I can’t find the right words to describe it because there just ISN’T ONE!
As much as I hated The Grudge (and still do) for its severe lack of characters, scares, thrills, it’s frustrating time structure and just how slow and forgettable it is, the least that it did was have an identifiable beginning, middle and end; Andrea Riseborough did, briefly, stop that movies main antagonist which then led to a shitty tie-in to open doors for a sequel that will probably never happen. Things aren’t always wrapped up and resolved when or how we’d like them to be and I get that but some people don’t like to leave things open-ended and not only that but it’s marketing and narrative twist makes me feel like I’m being taken advantage of.
I mean cutting the film off with no ending, no resolution? Seriously, who do you think you are, “The Devil Inside”? I mean, how would you feel I couldn’t bother to write an ending for this review and I just cut off mid-sente—
