Resurrection movie review: Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth shine in disturbing thriller

Language: English

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Angela Wong Carbone

Director: Andrew Semans

Resurrection is a disturbing film, not an easy watch, although it makes for engrossing cinema if you can stomach a lot of what goes on, especially towards the end. The film makes for a different sort of eerie experience, one that unsettles by plunging into the recesses of an unhinged mind. The complex plot creates scope for remarkable performances by Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth, pitted against each other as adversaries and yet bound by the psychological tension their characters share.

Writer-director Andrew Semans uses partner abuse and its ensuing trauma as material to create the plot backdrop, in the process highlighting how the emotional scar left behind by such an ordeal can have lasting impact and spawn psychotic behaviour in the victim. Margaret, the protagonist essayed by Hall, would appear far from a victim with such traits as the film begins. She is a top executive in a corporate firm and a single mother to a college-bound 17-year-old girl, and carries on a no-strings-attached affair with a married colleague. Then, one day at a conference, her demeanour of poise peels off. Margaret thinks she spotted David (Roth), her one-time boyfriend who’s much older than her and whom she has not seen in years. Stricken by fear on seeing David, she flees the place and runs all the way home where she breaks down as a child. She sees David in public places a few more times after that, while shopping with her daughter, at a diner and in a park. Finally, she confronts him and tells him to stay away from her daughter. David initially pretends she is mistaking him for someone else but Margaret feels she can see through his diabolic grin. Worse, the police won’t lodge a complaint against David because, legally, being spotted in public places is no crime.

We discover the reason for Margaret’s panic as she narrates details of her past life with David to a colleague, in a monologue. The disclosure is deeply unsettling and Hall’s delivery of the seven-minute monologue is admirably nuanced. She was a teenager when she met David who, it emerges, engaged in regular psychological and physical abuse. The screenplay lets Margaret’s toxic past life hurtle into the viewers’ senses entirely through her words, leaving it to the audience to mentally build a picture. The impact is searing. If Semans’ bid to create discomfort in the viewer’s mind is psychological for most parts, the film goes no-holds-barred with a gruesome stint of violence in its final act. Both the narrative tones effectively bring alive Margaret’s pain and are no less harrowing as a cinematic experience.

It is always a tricky business discussing plot points and twists of a thriller for there is the danger of spoilers, but if the above synopsis makes you feel Resurrection is a run-of-the-mill suspense drama about a woman avenging an abusive ex-lover, think again. The spin lies in the fact that we are watching incidents unfold entirely from Margaret’s perspective. If a lot of what happens, especially in the end, seems to lack logic it is because Semans tries capturing life as seen by a terrified abuse victim who may or may not be thinking coherently anymore. While the approach lets us identify with her emotional scars, it renders a hallucinatory effect to the storytelling, too, blurring the lines between the real and unreal.

Semans’ writing unravels the truth about Margaret gradually and the film’s tone starts to become increasingly dark and illusory as it moves towards a horrific high in the climax. Thereon, all lines between fact and fantasy are obliterated. It is a complex ending to grasp, mixing supernatural elements with stark realism and gore — a blend that is easily enabled by Margaret’s thought process, which is choked by a sense of chaos over what actually happens.

Technically, the film’s strong point is Semans’ writing. The screenplay gets creepy as we begin to discover Margaret beneath her alpha woman shell, along with the realisation that her version of reality may not be wholly reliable. The more the script moves into the realm of illusion, the more intense is the level of discomfort for the viewer. Yet, Margaret’s sense of fear is real — a fact underlined by Roth’s understated threat as David. Semans uses the dichotomy well while setting up his narrative, to heighten the uneasiness that defines the film’s overall mood.

The abstract tone of the narrative is used well to sustain a sense of the bizarre, especially in the blood-soaked climax where the deliberate impossibility of what happens defines Margaret’s sense of justice against her tormentor. You could wonder if the grotesque incidents of the climax happened in Margaret’s imagination, but these are meant to give a sense of closure to her trauma. As the story ends, the film leaves Margaret in a seemingly happy state, yet the last shot captures terror in her eyes. We understand the film’s message: No matter how safe a one-time victim of abuse may finally feel, the paranoia never goes away.

The film is chilling, though not in a traditional Hollywood mainstream way. Semans effectively uses traditional tropes of the psychological thriller to take the story to a very different level of horror, one where the narrative lets the audience become one with the trauma of an abuse victim. Margaret’s story is executed with a slow burn treatment, which maximises the impact of the pain and psychosis she constantly lives with.

A lot of Semans’ directorial triumph lies in the quality of performance he extracts from his lead cast. Horror plots aren’t normally the platform for a cast to showcase its acting skills, but Resurrections flaunt strong characters. Hall’s tour de force act as Margaret belongs to an elite club of stellar performances and brings to mind Isabelle Adjani in Possession, Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, Sissy Spacek in Carrie or Kathy Bates in Misery — tormented female protagonists shouldering psychological horror classics. In Resurrection, Hall brings alive Margaret’s manic presence with brooding intensity. As the film starts, you wonder if her wide-eyed reserve denotes cautious discipline in life or an empowered ambition to win. As the story progresses, you begin to sense her disconcerting restlessness. Hall brings alive Margaret with a dark edge.

In contrast, Tim Roth portrays the scary David with silken vibes, lending fear a soft-voiced menace. Roth’s David is at his despicable worst when he uses a kind tone, for you know he is using that tone to psyche out Margaret and also stress on the fact that he actually relishes her misery. Roth has always aced playing the antagonist. In Resurrection, he adds a new twist.

Eerie all along and grossly gory in parts, the film leaves you queasy, emotional and thrilled at the same time. Resurrection is a visual experience difficult to shake off the mind for days.

Rating: * * * and 1/2 (three and a half stars out of five)

(Resurrection is available on BookMyShow Stream from 9 December 2022)

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

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