Movie Reviews
Resurrection ★★★
Director: Andrew Semans
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Angela Wong Carbone
Release: TBC
The aftermath of trauma can take many effects on people. It can consume us, it can improve us, and it can dwell within our minds. Andrew Seamans’ sophomore film Resurrection attempts to explore this period in anyone’s life.
It follows the story of Margaret (Rebecca Hall), who leads a successful and orderly life, perfectly balancing the demands of her busy career and single parenthood to her fiercely independent daughter Abbie. But that careful balance is upended when she glimpses a man she instantly recognizes, an unwelcome shadow from her past. A short time later, she reencounters him. Before long, Margaret starts seeing David (Tim Roth) everywhere — and their meetings appear to be far from an unlucky coincidence. Battling her rising fear, Margaret must confront the monster she’s evaded for two decades who has come to conclude their unfinished business.
As Resurrection begins, you can sense that Andrew Semans is out to mess with your mind. This unsettlingly clean ambience has a sinister tone that unravels into quite the finale. Semans’ begins this odyssey with so much control, and our understanding of Margret is that she has complete control of her life. She has the job, the daughter, a spicy affair and a routine. You get to understand her quite clearly within the first act, but something triggers her once you begin to notice these changes within her life. Seamens’ uses tight framing and blurred scenery to intensify the paranoid state Margret is in.
Once David appears in Margret’s life, you see the true side of Resurrection. There is no control over what we are witnessing, and Rebecca Hall channels so much energy to convey this. She yet again delivers a behemoth of a performance. Confronting your fears and the past is never easy, and Seamens’ makes you fully aware of this. It intensifies as Margaret deals with her teenage daughter, who wants to control her own life. As a mother, Margaret wants to control all elements of her small family, but her haunted past makes her lose focus on the importance of what has kept her going all this time.
Within the narrative, the story ark can lose focus, and it ultimately is a downfall to some segments of the film. It takes too much time to correct the momentum it has at times. As we come to the third act, it becomes quite a head-scratching experience. While you relish at this moment, there are a lot of questions that can’t be answered. Tim Roth and Rebecca Hall deliver one of the most grippingly tense scenes for quite some time. Seamens’ executes this scene with great ferocity, and his cast fully complements this artistry. Unfortunately, it loses its purpose by this point, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Trauma can have multiple effects, and Seamens’ delivers his vision of trauma to his audience.
Perhaps Resurrection needed a bit more time to develop, but ultimately it’s a thrilling experience with Rebecca Hall showing why she is one of the finest actors working today.
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