2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Paul Andrews The Turn of the Screw is set in 60's London where a young woman named Jenny Gooding (Patsy Kensit) has an interview with Mr. Cooper (Julian Sands) about becoming a Governess for two young children in a big house. Mr. Cooper is their legal guardian as both their parents were killed & he needs someone to look after them, Jenny accepts the position. Once there Jenny discovers a huge stately house isolated in the middle of the English countryside where she meets Mrs. Grose (Stephane Audran) the housekeeper & Flora (Claire Szekeres) the young girl she is meant to be looking after. Jenny receives a letter in the post informing her that the second child Miles (Joseph England) has been expelled from his school & coming back. Things go well at first but Miles & Flora are a couple of creepy kids, especially Miles. Jenny also learns that the previous Governess mysteriously died, Jenny's stay starts to become a nightmare as she suffers bad dreams, visions of supposedly dead people & there is definitely something very wrong with Flora & Miles...This British French co-production was written & directed by Rusty Lemorande & is a film that I found far too pedestrian & dull for my liking. The script by Lemorande takes itself 100% seriously, is somewhat sedately paced & was based on the short story by Henry James & I think that the word 'short' is crucial here as this filmed adaptation feels very drawn out & in my opinion has very little substance. I have never read the novel so I cannot compare the two but the fact that the film is narrated feels like it was added to increase the duration & as a whole very little actually happens. Jenny is the only central character with the two children & housekeeper the only other character's with any sort of significant screen time. The film didn't flow properly & the narrative didn't work for me, why does Jenny become so afraid of Miles? Did I miss something, she almost convinces herself without him actually doing anything that I can remember apart from being a bit naughty. Jenny ends up having a breakdown which just didn't seem plausible or convincing in context at all. The ending puzzled me as well, why did the kid die? What were those ghost's at the window doing? What happened to them? Was it Jenny's imagination? The things a mess & ends up being very frustrating as I felt there was a good film trying to break out, if only a bit more time had been spent on the pacing as it's very slow & the story which is loose to say the least. As a whole it's not very engaging or interesting & I found it became quite dull well before the end credits started to roll.Director Lemorande does a terrific job & The Turn of the Screw has a wonderful visual style to it, the locations, the interesting props & set dressing, the creepy toys, the colour schemes, there's some really cool angles & camera shots & I think a lot of time & effort was put into the look of the film. If only as much time had been spent on the script as on the visuals, a shame. Forget about any gore as there isn't any, there is also a distinct lack of scares.Technically the film is great & I have no complaints here, it was shot in Surrey, England. I have to say Patsy Kensit is hot in this, she's very cute. Julian Sands fans will be very disappointed to learn despite his top billing in the credits he has nothing more than a cameo that amounts to about three minutes of screen time.The Turn of the Screw (isn't that a great title for a film?) is a bit of a bore, there's nothing particularly exciting or memorable about it & it doesn't seem to know what sort of film it wants to be. I can't say I'd recommend it unless you like slow, dull pointless films.

khalifakhella This 1992 adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw" is a strange experience indeed. Taking the Henry James Psychological ghost story masterpiece as a starting point, writer/director Rusty Lemorande makes a film that is ultimately a failure, but a very intriguing failure nonetheless. The director takes the central premise of the well known story about a governess coming to doubt the innocence of the children under her care and realizing slowly that they may be haunted by the ghosts of her malevolent and sick predecessors, and produces a film that is much more modern (and by modern I mean graphic) which turns the story into a much more perverted psycho-sexual story about child abuse, the occult and of course repression (all themes that were addressed in Henry James' novella but in a much more subdued manner). But despite achieving moments of true dread and an overall ominous and doom-laden atmosphere (aided tremendously by the beautifully Gothic locations and the occasionally brilliant cinematography), the director errs by making the story lose all the subtlety that was imbued in the original novella and instead relying too much on graphic sex scenes and overt violence (although these only appear in dream sequences which are somewhat brief) and ultimately as many filmmakers do when adapting a classic story, reading too much into the story in terms of sexual repression and perversion. Although James' novella mainly dealt with issues of sanity, perspective and depravity, the main strength of the story was the ambiguity that James imbued the story with, something which made the story much more frightening and disturbing even a century after it was published. But director Lemorande throws all subtlety out the window by using ear-shattering musical cues, gratuitous blood and sex and by portraying the apparitions as some sort of demonic beings, which are all things that do not correspond with the original tone or intention of the original story. But in the end the film has its merits as Lemorands succeeds in creating some moments of visual ingenuity as well as the aforementioned atmosphere which is truly haunting and unnerving, things which many other adaptations of the same story failed to achieve.

brandonsites1981 I have never had the pleasure of reading the story or seeing the previous film adaptions from which this movie is based on which probably explains why I liked this film so much. Anyway, the story is about a nanny (Patsy Kensit) who takes charge of a household for a strange man (Julian Sands- in a brief cameo appearance) and his even stranger children who seem troubled by some unknown terror. This is a frightening film with a slow pace that actually works in favor of the film. As a result of the slow pace the terror is allowed to slowly build up to a terrifying climax. Kensit does a respectable job in the lead role.Rated R; Nudity & Sexual Situations.

gardner-2 If you know Henry James' novel and if you know Jack Clayton's first-rate adaptation of this subtle psychological subject, beware this poor adaptation from Rusty Lemorande. No tension at all and Patsy Kensit really is no Deborah Kerr.