Christopher Bennem

A Wonderful and moving interactive story. Unforgettable, really, with an excellent score. I saw this just after a death in the family and was completely gutted when it was over. If I have one point of criticism, it would be that it is a LOT of tragedy to experience in one family (there are 11 tales, all of death, and almost all are ‘unnatural’ in some way or another.) nevertheless, it still manages to conclude in a poignant and stirring fashion. Strongly recommend.

This movie is a revelation that has four names: Shirley Jackson who wrote the novel on which it is based (which makes a lot of sense: she’s the author of the most anthologized short story in American literature, The Lottery), Taissa Farmiga, whose acting is—literally—spellbinding, Alexandra Daddario, who is magnetic onscreen, and the incredible directing by Stacie Passon. Jackson is inevitably going to take you places you don’t expect (her “Lottery” was the inspiration for the same ritual in the Hunger Games), and Passon does an incredible job of leading you down the garden path (as it were) with bucolic scenes and a lilting score that belie the undercurrent of threat. But writer and director invest the unassuming everytown with an undertow of hate that is sadly appropriate to our current national mood, and its intolerance of the other. Through it all, the performances of Farmiga and Daddario anchor everything with a fraught emotion that seeks to manage the horror they’ve had to endure. Passon at times uses an almost Wes Anderson-like staging which facilitates the fake-out, and ultimately makes the tragedy all the more poignant as we realize to what extent these two women have constructed a stage set in which to enact their survival. Southern manners as hyper-ritualized kabuki theater. Hanging in there until the very last scene is worth the final, beautifully-acted and wonderfully understated payoff from Farmiga. I can’t recommend this film highly enough.