Finn Wolfhard

(On Cable TV, January 2021) With the rise of digital post-production, it’s easier than ever to make pretty films without much substance, and that’s how The Turning is liable to impress most viewers with its atmosphere, while leaving them confounded on a narrative level. While the film can point to the Henry James novella “The Turn of the Screw” as inspiration, the actual story doesn’t go much beyond “governess of two kids in a gothic manor becomes obsessed by ghosts,” before giving up and offering two conclusions for its audience to digest. By the time the credits roll, there’s a sense of having been bamboozled by indecisive filmmakers incapable of choosing between an ending or another. The Turning isn’t the first film to play this trick, but others in the same vein (such as Savages) seemed far more deliberate about it—here it just feels sloppy. On the brighter side (not by much), the atmosphere of the film is generally successful, bathed in overcast days, spooking mansion nights and enough psychopathic behaviour from the kids to send anyone else screaming for the exit. Director Floria Sigismondi gets half-marks for managing at least half the film, while Finn Wolfhard is too successful at portraying a detestable kid. If it wasn’t for the inconclusive ending, there wouldn’t be much to say about The Turning—it follows a well-trodden path without offering much ingenuity, and after a while it becomes the kind of annoying film you just want to razz mercilessly. Looking at the production history of the film, it becomes amazing that such a protracted production history with a complete eleventh-hour reboot would end up with something so meaningless, but that’s often the case with projects so ill-conceived that they shouldn’t have been undertaken in the first place.