Lenny Abrahamson can do many things, and thankfully genre convention isn’t one of them. All of his films flip and twist stories, finding intriguing, kaleidoscopic lenses through which to view his characters. In The Little Stranger, adapted from Sarah Waters’ novel, the Irish director explores desire and repression through a gothic period horror, which is more fascinating character study than traditional ghost story.
Domhnall Gleeson is clipped and ramrod-straight as Faraday, a doctor with a deep-rooted inferiority complex arising from his poverty-stricken background. As a child in 1919, his mother worked as a maid in Hundreds House, a huge stately home that formed young Faraday’s idea of wealth, glamour and power. But decades on, and a World War later, the house is now deteriorating: the wallpaper peels, the velvet upholstery frays, and Ole Birkeland’s mossy cinematography manages to make the very air seem weighted with damp and decay.
Indeed, the house’s inhabitants seem to be suffocating, including Caroline (Ruth Wilson), a bright but weary young woman who becomes the somewhat bemused focus of Faraday’s attentions. But is he attracted to her or his romanticised visions of what her household represents?
Abrahamson painstakingly builds a sense of dread in this tightly wound examination of the British class system. He paces the film slowly, and peppers the mannered interactions with small, shocking moments that could indicate supernatural forces, or the unleashed emotion of repressed humans. Wilson is superb, at once droll and rueful, while Gleeson’s Faraday is an unnerving creation. His ego, anger and jealousy erupt in small, sudden flashes, as if an infection of emotion is spreading within him.
The Little Stranger runs slightly too long and the first half drags – and like many horrors, the answers of the climax may be less terrifying than the preceding questions. But Abrahamson’s talent for emotional complexity gets under your skin, and this psychological drama stays with you after the credits roll.