SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This adaptation is very faithful indeed with the characters, the setting, the various moments of the story, apparitions of the ghosts included. The film is also clear about the parents of the kids, the mother died of yellow fever, we assume in India, and the father died on duty in India too one year late. But the film, like Henry James' novella, does not capture the tremendous trauma the children must have gone through and then – the film is clear about that – Miss Jessel got pregnant which made her have to go, to be let go by the Master. Pregnant from whom? The situation implies from Peter Quint. But the first double trauma of the children is now amplified by a second double trauma with Mis Jessel going away and dying, by suicide as the opening scene shows, closely followed by Peter Quint dying in some kind of accident, fake or not does not matter. And strangely enough only the nameless governess is traumatized by these facts and she is led into seeing ghosts that no one else sees.The film insists on this aspect of the character. She is getting little by little haunted – but in her sole mind – by her two predecessors. The kids are at an age – and their having gone through these two double traumas helps – when they can capture the fears of adults and they can get motivated to play on these fears, for fun or in this case for liberation.The governess becomes a power and control freak and she transforms teaching into taming wild animals if not beasts. She sees them perverted while she is the one who is perverted. The film is discreet on this side of things though Henry James insisted on the governess's hugging, kissing, holding hands, embracing, etc., with Miles particularly. She was obviously falling in love with Miles and wanted to possess him so strongly that he would became part of her own self. She was cannibalistic in her unjustified love for Miles. To love a child is a lot more challenging than to love an adult because the child cannot answer, cannot say no, cannot run away and when Miles tries the governess does not understand. The film insists on that but not on the sentimental, emotional and physical love of the governess towards Miles that is definitely desire and this desire is somewhere felt as wrong, evil is her word, so she has to repress it and the ghosts are her tools to transfer her repressive desire against her perverse impulse onto the object of this pedophile lust, hence onto Miles, and accidentally Flora.She literally tortures the kids with the ghosts, till the very end, though Benjamin Britten does a far better job with that last scene about being alone and how the governess is understanding the ambiguity of the situation on which Miles is playing full blast, and it works. That's what the two kids show us in the film very clearly: they are playing with the governess like two cats and one mouse. She falls in the trap every single time and she ends up being a fool. But that fool is criminal.The film here centers this last scene on the last breath of Miles. He is more or less dragged by the governess into her arms and into an embrace and here the films innovates because the call for "Quint, you devil, Where are you, where are you?" is a call for help when Miles sees his end is close, the praying manta has captured him. But Quint won't be able to come because he is no where, near or far, he is no longer one of them. And the film is clear when it shows the governess embraces Miles to death, till death parts him from his life, and Miles is just plainly choked to death. No ambiguity, no fuzziness. She is a criminal and she was brought there by the size of the responsibility she was entrusted with and she could not cope with and up to. Well done, well directed, well performed, the film is impressive, though in no way frightening. We are horrified by the governess's fall into crime because of her repressed and unaccepted feelings and desires for a boy under her own educational responsibility. She is depicted as a closet pedophile who ends up killing the child she wants to possess, including physically. I am afraid though this takes a lot of mystery from the story without modernizing the vision. Such facts are rare in the concerned world of education, and in fact I just wonder if they are in proportion more important in this world than in the wide society around.Note there is a mistake on the back sleeve of the DVD: the children are not those of the "charming bachelor" because he is only the guardian and they are his nephew and niece. But, well, a child is a child, though exiling one's own "children" to a country house with not contact with their "father" would be more than unnatural – which it is here – but definitely inhumane and even barbaric.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

nmheavy I had heard of 'TURN OF THE SCREW' and thought it sounded interesting. The novel may well have been, however, I found this adaptation grew more tiresome the longer I watched. The first time I saw Quint on the tower, I was intrigued, but by the end I'd lost all interest and couldn't wait for it to finish. This adaptation appears to have neither rhyme nor reason, and is often confusing, revealing no real explanation for any of the characters actions/reactions. Caroline Pegg who plays the starring role has a terrible posture, craning her neck out literally the whole time, her mouth open in disbelief for the vast majority of the film (seemingly her only other expression). Her acting is at best average. A lot of her dialogue sounded ridiculous. I wouldn't waste your time with this one.

irish23 I read "Turn of the Screw" over 20 years ago but I recall that it struck me as dead boring. I watched this adaptation in the hopes the story would grow on me over the years. Alas! The film has lovely sets, costumes, and music. It occasionally has decent acting. But overall it can be watched on fast-forward most of the time and not lose anything. Perhaps it relies on the idea that viewers will be so familiar with James' story that dialogue and even (gasp) exposition might be necessary to flesh things out a bit. I learned more from reading the viewer comments here than I did from watching the film.Poor Jodhi May must have drunk gallons of water during filming, since she seems to spend about 50% of her on screen time with eyes bulging and her mouth hanging open. Her descent into madness is believably gradual, but her Victorian ideas of purity and evil seem to leap from nowhere. Her character desperately needed context in order to be more clear.I saw "The Innocents" with Deborah Kerr a few years ago and it was genuinely creepy. This Masterpiece Theatre production lacked Innocents' clarity of narrative and commitment to interpretation. Instead, it wandered through far too many long shots, pan shots, and crane shots across an English country estate. And the ending was completely anti-climactic, with May's emotional level the same as it had been throughout most of the rest of the film, when instead it should have been leaping off the screen.Three stars for pretty pictures and occasional acting; minus seven stars for poor script, vision, and direction.

Sklaeren The turn of the screw is one of Henry James' easiest novel to read, and also one of the scariest books ever, for its sense of suspense and that way to play with your nerve. And it has very cinematographic writing, when reading the most intense parts of the book you can't help but seeing it, it just scream for a movie adaptation. Well this film is as a whole quite good, very faithful to James' text. It doesn't reduce it to just another ghost story, but respects that the characters' psychology and neurosis really are the heart of it. The cast is very good, especially Jodhi May. But that little Miles boy couldn't ever be described as an angel, he's just evilly annoying and obnoxious from the start. Colin Firth, as "the master", has approximately 3 minutes of screen time to settle his dashing, charming gentleman of a character, make the governess so in love with him that she'll accept the weird job condition (and may even explain her later neurotic state), and make such an impression that has to last 'til the movie end. And he does that just well, because he's sooooo adorable. My only disappointment is the lack of general atmosphere, it's mostly too distant, and scenes like the first appearance of each ghost don't produce the shock expected (well, if you've read the book...). All of other "ghosts scene" is quite effective, if not very subtle (think dramatic music). The very end is also a lot more explicit than in the book.