‘Things Heard & Seen’ Review

Amanda Seyfried performs a lady who suspects her home — and her husband — could also be harboring darkish secrets and techniques in Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s Netflix horror movie.

Removed from the constant vital glory of Sundance contemporaries like Kelly Reichardt and Debra Granik — and even the sporadic vital glory of a Lisa Cholodenko or an Ira Sachs — and to not be confused with extra marketable writing-directing duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini have cast probably the most perplexing profession paths in American impartial movie.

Within the almost twenty years since their 2003 breakout American Splendor, nothing they’ve made has come near delivering on that debut’s prankish promise. Efforts have included a high-profile misfire (The Nanny Diaries); a fitfully amusing comedy starring Kristen Wiig in hot-mess mode (Woman Most Doubtless); a torturous train in tweeness (The Further Man); and a slight adaptation of an acclaimed coming-of-age novel (Ten Thousand Saints).

As a substitute of cultivating the visible wit and scruffy emotional intricacy that made American Splendor such a deal with, Berman and Pulcini have drifted towards a form of shrug-worthy, middlebrow indie-ish proficiency, crafting tales of oddballs and outsiders however smoothing the rougher edges and taming the messiness into tastefully offbeat packages. Even their stronger outings — Cinema Verite, a 2011 HBO drama in regards to the making of PBS’ docu/actuality collection An American Household, for instance — go away an impression of surfaces nimbly skimmed somewhat than depths plumbed. The pacing, management of tone and command over their star-strewn casts differ from movie to movie, however most of Berman and Pulcini’s work has been caught on that irritating spectrum of nice.

I want I may say they break the blah streak of their Netflix neo-Gothic Issues Heard & Seen, which finds the pair tackling a distinct style — supernatural horror — with customary professionalism however no discernible spark of ardour or function. An adaptation of Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Issues Stop to Seem, the 1980-set movie follows a few artwork historians (Amanda Seyfried and James Norton) from Manhattan to the Hudson Valley, the place each their marriage and the fixer-upper they buy begin exhibiting indicators of … dysfunction. It is the most recent within the lengthy line of flicks about ladies unraveled by sinister forces unseen and really a lot seen, within the type of caddish, gaslighting husbands (from classics like, duh, Gaslight and Rosemary’s Child to much less distinguished examples like What Lies Beneath, mom! and Seyfried’s personal current You Ought to Have Left).

Issues Heard & Seen is extremely watchable, with an efficient 40 minutes or so of character-driven buildup grounded in Seyfried’s sympathetic efficiency. However Berman and Pulcini’s failure to generate suspense turns into problematic throughout a second half that settles into customary psycho-spouse thriller rhythms with some half-assed ghost-story and feminist parts tossed in. It is an odd match of a screenplay (tailored by Berman and Pulcini) that is too apparent, telegraphing somewhat than teasing out its twists, and course that is overly timid; one will get the sense that the filmmakers are checking off style tropes and tips from an inventory as an alternative of discovering methods to take a position them with contemporary chills or shivers.

The film opens on a be aware of auspicious creepiness. A person (Norton) pulls into the storage of a ramshackle rural house solely to have drops of blood splatter the windshield — after which, when he steps out of the automotive, his face. He appears up, realizing that the crimson leak is coming from the ceiling. A number of pictures later, he is working towards the digital camera with a bit woman in his arms.

We flash again six months to a celebration hosted by the person, George Claire, and his spouse, Catherine (Seyfried), at their New York Metropolis condo. Golden boy educational George has accepted a instructing place at a liberal arts faculty upstate, the place the 2 will relocate with younger daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). Catherine is giving up her job restoring spiritual murals, which she appears OK with — although a glimpse of her purging the nibble of cake she’s simply allowed herself hints at a darkness beneath her placid home glow.

George picks out a run-down farmhouse to purchase — the always-welcome Karen Allen performs the pleasant native actual property agent — and spends his days on campus whereas Catherine busies herself with renovations. Every can also be drawn to a youthful object of want: Catherine bonds with hunky handyman Eddie (Alex Neustaedter), who, in one of many movie’s few actually arresting pictures, is first seen from behind, staring on the home alongside youthful brother Cole (Jack Gore); George flirts shamelessly with Eddie’s alluring buddy Willis (Stranger Issues’ Natalia Dyer). The uneasy dynamic between the transplants and the townies (or the “wealthy horsey weekenders” and the “full-time rednecks,” as Catherine’s buddy quips) is one in all a number of provocative themes the filmmakers nod at with out pursuing.

Earlier than lengthy, issues are going bump within the night time — or, on this case, lights in the home are flickering, radios switching on and off, and a odor of gasoline wafting up from the basement into the bed room. Catherine finds a bizarrely annotated guide and an deserted marriage ceremony ring. Townspeople whisper when she discloses her new handle. And what is the take care of the previous lady who periodically pops up within the nook of the body, a presence solely barely spookier than the outsized crow that comes crashing by a window at some point?

In the meantime, Catherine begins turning away from dismissive, distracted George, and towards his hip, self-confident colleague Justine (Rhea Seehorn, deliciously sly). Justine’s sisterly encouragement of Catherine’s autonomy is much extra attention-grabbing than a subplot revolving round George’s division head (F. Murray Abraham, being very F. Murray Abraham), who natters away incessantly about Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.

Springer and Berman juggle the assorted strands ably, however wrestle to beat the screenplay’s structural issues — specifically, a shortage of rigidity and the absence of a pointy perspective. Issues Heard & Seen reveals its hand early: It is clear who the villain is, and any doubts we’ve got about Catherine’s psychological and emotional state are dispelled lower than an hour in, when somebody confirms that, sure certainly, the home is haunted. In consequence, we spend the rest of the film ready for the inevitable to transpire.

The author-directors may need juiced issues up by sticking nearer to Catherine — and in doing so, permitting some dread and thriller to ripen round George. Seyfried is actually as much as the duty. The actress does not must overplay Catherine’s tremulousness or contort her face right into a Munch-like masks of terror; with these large, anxious eyes, she’s a pure scream queen. Sadly, the movie typically ditches Catherine to tag together with George on his weaselly exploits. And Norton (Completely satisfied Valley, Little Girls), as a person who, after years of coasting on attractiveness and glib appeal, finds his narcissism catching up with him, offers away an excessive amount of too quickly; George is so transparently sketchy he is by no means menacing.

Berman and Pulcini additionally appear conspicuously tired of horrifying us, and even making us squirm. Their refusal to depend on low-cost bounce scares or shock cuts is admirable in idea, however the horror imagery right here feels perfunctory and the moments meant to unnerve come and go together with little aptitude or emphasis. (Nothing within the movie approaches the vivid nightmarishness of the apparitions in Netflix’s 2018 The Haunting of Hill Home, as an example.) Issues Heard & Seen flows, however by no means pauses to have the benefit of jolting us, jangling our nerves or toying with our expectations.

That is a disgrace as a result of as a story of a lady waking as much as the truth that her man is a grade-A a—gap, the film has glimmers of well timed fascination. In one of many strongest scenes, as Catherine and a stoned George drive house from a dinner, she appears on aghast as he places on a grasp class in poisonous masculinity — rushing simply to freak her out, groping her breast, taunting her. Catherine’s repressed resentments and queasily mounting revulsion towards her husband are a compelling core that the movie too steadily neglects. Issues Heard & Seen reveals us a wedding through which distrust creeps in to fill the void left by an absence of affection — a horror we hear and see, all proper, however by no means really feel in our bones.

Distributor: Netflix
Manufacturing firms: Doubtless Story
Administrators: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
Writers: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (tailored from the novel by Elizabeth Brundage)
Solid: Amanda Seyfried, James Norton, Natalia Dyer, Alex Neustaedter, Rhea Seehorn, Michael O’Keefe, Karen Allen, Jack Gore and F. Murray Abraham, James Urbaniak, Ana Sophia Heger
Producers: Anthony Bregman, Stefanie Azpiazu, Peter Cron, Julie Cohen
Government producers: Peter Pastorelli, Stephen Lippross, Robert Pulcini, Shari Springer Berman
Director of images: Larry Smith
Editors: Louise Ford, Andrew Mondshein
Manufacturing designer: Lester Cohen
Music: Peter Raeburn
Costume designer: April Napier
Casting: Jeanne McCarthy, Rori Bergman

119 minutes