The tagline for this movie: In A Country Torn By War, Survival Comes At All Costs… And Darkness Closes In. In medieval times a pious young woman and her domineering mother-in-law eke out a life on the outskirts of society doing what they must to survive as they await her husband’s return from war. When a man from their past returns from war it coincides with a mysterious knight that may be a product of a curse bringing death to the area.
The Dreadful is a medieval gothic horror movie that overdoses on the mundanity of living in that time period to a point that it bores instead of scares with certain revelations being revealed in such a way that what was meant to be shock and awe comes off as morbid and mild. Natasha Kermani directs this film in a way that has uneasy with every interaction the characters have but the screenplay she writes fails to provide a narrative flow that makes the whole affair worth watching and though it could be argued that it is due to the Shin Buddhist parable that the story is based on, there is something lost in the translation. Sophie Turner and Kit Harrington give performances that keep you watching to see where their relationship leads but it is Marcia Gay Harden who really drives the tale, but due to a lack of backstory for her character the ending feels weak and her character’s fate is lackluster. This particular scenario was told better in the 1964 Japanese movie Onibaba aka The Hole as this current version comes off muddled where it buries the lead so much that on the uncovering of the truth, the audience is left wishing there was more payoff for the emotional investment. If this movie was a tv show it would be one that thought it had another season to wrap up all the dangling plot threads, but found out it was getting cancelled so decided to put a season’s worth of wrapping up in the last episode leaving more questions than answers in its attempt at a resolution. I rate this movie a rating of 2 out of 5.
