The Lit­tle Stranger

Per­haps the only thing that British peo­ple love more than com­plain­ing about the weath­er is a lav­ish peri­od dra­ma. Tele­vi­sion or cin­e­ma – we’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly fussy, just as long as the homes are state­ly, the accents clipped and the time peri­od any­thing but con­tem­po­rary. Lenny Abramson’s The Lit­tle Stranger fol­lows in the foot­steps of ​‘The Woman in Black’ and ​‘The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray’ in being a suc­cess­ful goth­ic nov­el adapt­ed for the big screen. Sarah Waters’ book gar­nered crit­i­cal acclaim as a sharp and atmos­pher­ic mys­tery, but some­thing has been lost in translation.

Dr Fara­day (Domh­nall Glee­son) trav­els to the dilap­i­dat­ed War­wick­shire man­sion Hun­dreds Hall in 1947 to aid the trou­bled Ayers fam­i­ly, con­sist­ing of Angela Ayers (Char­lotte Ram­pling) and her two chil­dren, RAF vet­er­an Rod­er­ick (Will Poul­ter) and Car­o­line (Ruth Wil­son). Fol­low­ing his stint in World War Two, Rod­er­ick is dis­fig­ured and suf­fer­ing from PTSD, which leads Fara­day to the fam­i­ly. But he recalls Hun­dreds Hall from his child­hood, and feels a mys­te­ri­ous pull towards the man­sion he was enam­oured with many years ear­li­er. As Fara­day becomes deep­er entrenched in the affairs of the Ayers fam­i­ly, strange things begin to hap­pen, hint­ing that Fara­day (and the Ayers) are not all that they seem.

The Lit­tle Stranger feels like a bit of a depar­ture for Abram­son, who has pre­vi­ous­ly focused on char­ac­ter-dri­ven work such as Frank and his 2015 hit Room. It’s the lack of char­ac­ter which makes his lat­est a frus­trat­ing watch. Fara­day is a gener­ic nefar­i­ous bore, while Poul­ter is com­plete­ly mis­cast and Ram­pling and Wil­son just don’t have a great deal to do with their with­er­ing damsels in dis­tress. The plot itself per­haps come across bet­ter on paper, but in visu­al form that’s lit­tle to see, and a curi­ous lack of frights for a sup­posed ghost story.

More than any­thing, it’s frus­trat­ing just how lit­tle hap­pens in the film. Faraday’s nar­ra­tion is used to reveal plot details in a clum­sy feat of expo­si­tion, and brief flash­es of poten­tial intrigue quick­ly fade away. Even the pro­duc­tion design feels cheap, lend­ing an ITV cos­tume dra­ma vibe to the fin­ished prod­uct, which sees a tal­ent­ed cast and a tal­ent­ed direc­tor pro­duce a film that’s mediocre at best, lack­ing the nec­es­sary char­ac­ters to make it a char­ac­ter study, or plot to make it the goth­ic hor­ror it pur­ports itself to be.