The Secret of Marrowbone

Some­one could make a lot of mon­ey by invent­ing a sys­tem which helps home­own­ers feel safe vis­it­ing their attic space. A dusty, dim­ly-lit attic plays a key role in this dra­mat­i­cal­ly under­pow­ered mid-cen­tu­ry chiller, in which the eccen­tric Mar­row­bone fam­i­ly are forced to deal with both the lit­er­al and metaphor­i­cal demons who have cho­sen to reside above their heads.

George MacK­ay is Jack, the old­est of four sib­lings charged with lay­ing low in a spa­cious, chicly dis­tressed Amer­i­can farm­house fol­low­ing the death of their moth­er. Once Jack hits 21, he can lay claim to the prop­er­ty and live there legal­ly. Yet there are prob­lems, such as a nosey local lawyer (Kyle Soller), and the arrival of a man who may be their estranged father and the rea­son why they fled over­seas from Eng­land. Their only friend is per­son­able librar­i­an Allie (Anya Tay­lor-Joy), who also lives a soli­tary life despite being warm for Jack’s form.

Writer/​director Ser­gio G Sánchez takes a fair old time to intro­duce his intrigu­ing play­ers and sun­ny set­ting in the hope that he can lat­er fire out a glut of gnarly plot twists. The prob­lem with the film is that it is most inter­est­ing when doing as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, such as watch­ing the kids roam about the house, pick­ing sum­mer fruits or dash­ing through the sur­round­ing woodland.

The rev­e­la­tions, when they arrive, chip away at any cred­i­bil­i­ty and emo­tion the film might have gen­er­at­ed, mak­ing it feel like a mech­a­nised booby­trap rather than an engag­ing and trag­ic explo­ration of the cop­ing mech­a­nisms we devel­op to deal with trau­ma. The actors appear to be going through the motions in order to serve an increas­ing­ly sil­ly sto­ry­line which out­stays its wel­come by a good half-an-hour. It all just about comes togeth­er in the end, but it’s strange that a film which tries so hard to be sur­pris­ing can be so predictable.