If you have seen it, then you probably have a good idea why I wanted to write a review full of spoilers. There’s so much about The Turning that almost works that I felt we all had to be missing something: some explanation for why… certain things… turned out the way they did. I think I found that explanation. Meta-spoiler alert: the explanation isn’t necessarily a good one. In fact, it’s kind-of a mess. But a lot about The Turning turned out to be a mess. Take the screen shot I’m using to illustrate this post — it’s one of the most vivid images from the movie’s trailer. But the trailer’s the only place you’ll see it: it never made it to the finished film. In fact, it doesn’t even remotely belong in the finished film. Yes, The Turning felt a lot more like The Screwing to those of us that suffered through it in theaters, but at least it has the distinction of being an interesting failure.(Ahh, go on. Read it anyway.)
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.
#1 by Richard on March 31, 2020 - 7:55 pm
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Ugh. “The Turn of the Screw”……
Had to read that in high school, where it was beaten into us as an example of “The Unreliable Narrator”. It was so poorly taught that I refuse to re-read it, and maintain that it is vastly overrated.
Now some of James’ other ghost stories, like “The Ghostly Rental”, those are worth reading again and again.
#2 by Braineater on April 1, 2020 - 9:37 pm
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Ouch. You could make it interesting in a classroom environment, but you’d get into no end of trouble: “OK, boys and girls, today we’re going to talk about the sexual corruption of children…”
I had a great English teacher one year: he introduced me to Samuel Beckett. Trouble is, he retired mid-year, and his replacement made it his goal to grind me down with his gruesomely banal lesson plan. These days my old replacement teacher writes the fishing column for the local paper. The fish could do a better job.