The Turning (2020)
Directed by Floria Sigismondi
Content Warning: Sexual Assault is mentioned but not described.
Wow. Just wow. This was a rare experience. It’s not often that I leave a movie theater wondering, “Is that the worst movie of the year, or the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a theater?” It is not a good feeling. And yes, I am being upfront about this, no ‘oh did I like it or not? Read the review and find out’ malarkey. The Turning is horrific. Do not watch it. Watch any movie out right now instead. If that’s all you’re here for then kindly move on. If you want to hear me rip apart this…thing, then please read on! Also, SPOILERS!
I Guess You Can Call This A Plot.
The Turning features the dumbest woman on Earth, Kate, taking a job as a live-in tutor for a young girl, Flora, whose previous teacher left suddenly under mysterious circumstances. Nothing unusual there. Kate arrives at Flora’s home, the most comically creepy ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ style dilapidated mansion I have ever seen and ignores the immediate red flags by taking the job. Shortly thereafter, her young charge’s brother comes home from boarding school under mysterious circumstances and immediately acts like a huge creep at every opportunity. Oh, also the mansion is haunted by the ghost of a rapist. Or maybe it isn’t and Kate is just crazy. I don’t know or care.
Wow, Kate Really Cannot Make Good Decisions.
So back to this mansion. When Kate arrives, the mansion is in obvious disarray, broken windows, unkempt lawns, the caretakers who are supposed to be here are nowhere to be found…etc. These are signs that any reasonable person would take to mean danger, but Kate immediately tries to find the Nanny of the children to get started once no one answers the door. Kate finds the Nanny, a comically creepy old woman, in the greenhouse next to a collection of Flora’s toys. This collection is broken doll limbs arranged to look like a sacrificial altar, complete with red food coloring in the water they are soaking in. Cute.
How To Improve This Movie Immediately.
I mention all this because I need you to understand how over the top this imagery is and how I coped with the first ⅓ of this movie. For the first 30 or so minutes, I imagined this same movie remade but with Martin Lawrence playing the lead, of course in drag a la Big Momma’s House, and reacting reasonably to whatever he is seeing, like screaming “Ah hell naw!” When he sees the house for the first time, or him bending the snotty brother over his knee and spanking him because “Ain’t nobody gonna disrespect their teacher in this house”. It was shockingly effective.
I Pray I Never Have To Write About A Ghastly Rapist Again.
Unfortunately, I stopped being able to do this because at about the halfway point things get boring and even more nonsensical. Spooky things keep happening to Kate and she refuses to leave, which makes it difficult to have any sympathy for her when all this horror movie stuff is so obviously not in her wheelhouse. And that’s when the rape ghost shows up. There is not a single reason for a ghastly rapist to appear in this movie and for us to see an ethereal rape/murder(?) happen. It is classless and gross. Instead of feeling any kind of fear, I was just uncomfortable that I was in a room with a bunch of strangers watching a ghost rape that I was not prepared for.
Struggling To Find The Positives.
After all that, I need to take a moment and try to think of anything positive here. Uh…the score is alright, far and away the best part of the movie. Mackenzie Davis, who plays Kate, is doing her best to bring some gravitas to the role even though Kate is not a particularly well-written character. Brooklyn Pierce, who plays Flora, is also good and I would like to see her in roles that are mildly better written. Anything else positive…oh! The crew got a paycheck, which is always a good thing, and they probably won’t take any of the heat for how bad The Turning’s reviews are.
Basic Horror Movie Tropes.
Back to the twist and why it does not even remotely work. So, the finale of the film is us essentially learning that Kate is nondescript “crazy”. The problem is that there is no foreshadowing for this, so instead of feeling like, “oh okay, that makes sense once you think about it.” You feel like, “oh. Is that it? She’s just crazy? Is it too late to get my money back?” And the problem is because all the ‘foreshadowing’ was the filmmakers showing you standard horror movie tropes and expecting you to draw a completely different conclusion than what makes sense. I’ve seen a lot of horror movies, and while Haunted House stuff isn’t my favorite subgenre there are some good ones that I enjoy, like Amityville Horror and Hell House, LLC, which use a lot of the same imagery and scares that The Turning uses. Some examples: looking at a window and seeing a spooky ghost, a manakin’s head turning while someone isn’t looking, the ‘spooky branch of the house we don’t go to’, these are all standard. They can be in good or bad movies, but the point is these are typical scares that commonly appear in this type of film.
Turns Out Foreshadowing Is Hard.
Playing with these tropes is fine, but you can’t flatly show me these same old scenes and then expect me to come to a different conclusion than ‘the house is haunted’ without giving me some guidance. In movieland, I am prepared to suspend my disbelief and accept that ghosts exist. If you want me to suddenly be very skeptical, then you have to give me something more to latch onto and The Turning doesn’t, it just expects me to know where everything is going at all times. This is not rewarding the audience for being familiar with the genre, it is punishing your audience for being familiar with the genre. The only actual foreshadowing is that Kate’s mom is in an assisted living facility with some, again, nondescript affliction.
Ouch.
I’m gonna end this before I work myself into another frothing rage over this movie. Bottom line, don’t see this. If you’re interested in a good haunted house movie, watch one of the others I mentioned just now, they are much better. Now that that’s all settled, I do wish the director, Floria Sigismondi, luck in her future endeavors. This was her directorial debut and while I did not care for it I think that she could make something a lot better than this with a decent script in the future. Best of luck for next time.
I really enjoy your reviews, what did you believe may had helped this movie?
Good question. I would make 2 changes, 1) remove the rape ghost and any general rapey-Ness, it adds nothing. 2) Try to make more unique visuals or a more unusual story structure so the audience can more easily pick up on how Kate is supposed to be ‘losing her mind’.
It’s tough though because both of those require a lot of work.