Holy smoke, a 3.9, IMDB? Et tu, Brute?!?
It's better than that! Sure, maybe not a 7, but easily a 5 and, in my book, a 6 to 6.5.
Based on 1898's ghost story The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, The Turning began production in 2016 as a Steven Spielberg pet project. Alas, after several rewrites, he withdrew as an executive producer five weeks before filming began at Killruddery House in Ireland. (If that's not the perfect name for a haunted house, BTW, I don't know what is!)
The film's aesthetic is lush, gorgeous, dark, atmospheric, 10% gritty and, as Rotten Tomatoes writes, "stylistic."
Unfortunately, it's also choppy sailing, and those waves leave you a bit seasick because you don't know what's coming, going, real, or imagined.
On the plus side, I loved that perhaps 70-75% of the scenes included something bizarre, creepy, or scary. Compared to something like, say, The Conjuring, or most horror films in which something wicked cometh perhaps only 3-5 times in 90 minutes, The Turning dishes out fear after fear like McDonald's slingin' fries.
And, for whatever this is worth, the ending was a surprise to me, so I give props to the rewriters for taking it in a direction I only partially anticipated.
If you love horror, I wouldn't necessarily recommend running out to see it, but do catch it when it hits your tiny screen at home. I see everything Mackenzie Davis touches, but this'll save you two hours outta the house and fifteen bucks wasted on pop and popcorn.
