![]() ![]() James Norton is the perfect arsehole, Amanda Seyfried plays the main character with the right amount of hysteria, but the supporting cast is really where it’s at. Perhaps the movie’s best feature is the cast, each of whom actually do a really great job in their respective roles. However, it’s mysterious enough to maintain interest if you’re into this sort of thing. And I am. If only they had done away with these tropes and focused more on its Bly Manor and Rebecca style thriller elements, it might have been more successful and have more appeal to a broader audience. ![]() Objects moving by themselves, a haunted house, lights flickering, a strange smell coming from nowhere, blah blah blah. I won’t mince my words and pretend it’s perfect: this film is full of horror clichés. Something tells me that the book was better, which is usually the case… but I actually don’t think the one star reviews are warranted on this occasion. And boy, there are a lot of them. Basically, it sounds like the plot of a horror film, but it’s more of a cerebral thriller with strong Rebeccavibes. Before long, Catherine begins to find out some disturbing truths about the family who lived in their house before them, and strongly suspects that something supernatural is going on. ![]() Starring Amanda Seyfried as leading lady Catherine Clare, the film is about what happens when she, her husband and her daughter move out of bustling Manhattan to an old, possibly haunted house in upstate New York. Things Heard & Seen is based on a novel named All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage, which was loosely based on a true story involving the 1982 murder of a young woman named Cathy Krauseneck. On this occasion though, I was actually pleasantly surprised, especially as so many critics were completely slating it. So, as you’d expect, I didn’t go into this movie with much hope of enjoying it. the Machines, the streaming giant doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for putting out brilliant movies. Barring a few anomalies like The Irishman, Marriage Story and The Mitchells vs. “Things Heard and Seen” is not worth hearing or seeing.Here’s something you already know: Netflix original films are generally not brilliant. You know a movie is not working when the actors look as lost as you feel, when plot threads dangle without logic or hope of closure and when intrigue is replaced by a rabid impatience to end the darn thing already. As for the “things seen,” I defy you to perceive anything since this dim bulb of a movie appears to be shot in the dark, a failed artistic choice that makes you think the characters or the filmmakers neglected to pay their electric bill. The “things heard” about the mystic teachings of Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenbourg, who believed in ghosts, go nowhere. What a story! What actors! What a hot mess! In adapting Elizabeth Brundage’s slow burn of a novel for the screen, married directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman (“American Splendor,” “Cinema Verite”) cram in too much of the book and not enough of their own interpretation of what makes a relationship live or die.ĭownload the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers" podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Tunein, Google Play Music and Stitcher. Is it the ghost of the wife, who died at her husband’s murderous hand, that Catherine sees in her window? And is that the dead woman’s ring she finds near the sink? The house holds secrets that Catherine learns from handyman Eddie Vayle (Alex Neustaedter) and his younger brother Cole (Jack Gore), whose parents previously owned the farm until their tragic demise. The third star of “Things Heard and Seen” is the haunted house, a remote and ramshackle dairy farm in New York’s Hudson Valley that George purchased to isolate his wife and young daughter, Franny (Ana Sophia Heger), while he swans around the classroom as a flirty object of desire, especially for young Willis, nicely sizzled by Natalia Dyer of “Stranger Things.” He is George Claire, played by James Norton, the talented British star of “Grantchester” and ”Happy Valley,” who tries on an American accent and swagger to heighten the surface charm and inner demons of a man who prods Catherine to put her vocation on hold so he can take a teaching position at a small-town college by forging his credentials. ![]()
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