Confessions of a big bad wuss – over the past few years I’ve taken huge leaps; I saw Doctor Sleep and Spiral at the cinema, and I’ve sat through Hereditary and more. Now it seems like I’m actively seeking out movies that might have ghosts in them with Things Heard & Seen, without even a favourite teddy to hug tight. What am I doing? Don’t fly too close to the sun, Icarus! Damn. I’m actually here because I saw that Amanda Seyfried said that working with David Fincher on Mank completely changed her attitude and approach to acting, and I want to see what she’s got. This movie could’ve even been filmed before Mank, and may not be the type of vehicle she had in mind for a personal revolution, but we’ll see.
George Claire (James Norton) takes a job out of the city, and moves his wife Catherine (Amanda Seyfried) and daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger) to an old and rundown house he was able to get for cheap. You know what that means? Murder house. Pretty soon, Franny starts to complain about a presence in the house, and Catherine aims to uncover the history of the house’s previous owners. Directed by filmmaking team Shari Springer Bergman and Robert Pulcini, the movie spends most of its time following each half of the married couple, as they forge their own paths in their new town and drift further apart.
Things Heard & Seen is slow, and steady. There’s a bit of tell-don’t-show, a cinematic no-no most criminally regarding how Catherine starts to feel a connection to the spirit in her house. There are bits of information chucked out there that don’t absorb into anything substantial either, like the fact that Catherine’s hired hands used to live in the house, Catherine’s eating affliction, or the sketchy Bible she finds damning certain people. And at the commencement of the supernatural occurrences in the house, the movie could all the more reasonably be called ‘Things Smelt & Seen’, amirite? 😏 Referring of course to the infrequent smell of gas Catherine senses wafting into the main bedroom. More seriously though, the movie is aiming to wrap its arms around a lot of moving pieces, and with the new neighbours making acquaintances with many of the townsfolk, for a long time the ghost story is seriously secondary to the relationship drama happening between Catherine and her husband. In that respect, Things Heard & Seen is very similar to The Nest, a movie that came out earlier this year whereby, a husband moves his family to the countryside for a job opportunity, and the man becomes increasingly untrustworthy. It’s like this movie saw the script for that movie and said, ‘yeah, well, we’re going to do that too, but with ghosts, and blackjack’… minus the blackjack, as it turns out. But what the supernatural elements of the movie do is add a serious edge to the fine relationship drama at play, or at least it does for me, who is more novel to ghost stories than some. Jude Law was the first-class sleazebag in The Nest, and I found myself noting James Norton as equally conceited and secretive in his take on George Claire.
The movie works with a faint lore that everything we see in our world has an equal representation in the spiritual realm, and ghosts act as a link between the two, willing to chaperone recently passed souls into the afterlife. Light will attract light, and good will ultimately triumph, but a dark spirit allows evil to run amok. Catherine accepts that having this ghoul in her house is a good thing, as she feels calm when it is around, something akin to a guardian angel, as her husband becomes all the more deceitful. In a funny way, the way the ghost has got Catherine’s back reminded me of Christina Ricci’s Casper if it were a grown-up’s adaption, or perhaps more accurately Matilda: The Adult Years, whereby Catherine’s spirit is able to locks doors and makes the lights flicker when frustrated at George’s bitch-ass lies. Increasingly, Catherine discovers that her husband is up to no good, and where things get interesting is in the revelation that her friendly ghost has a rival due to a second presence in the house. I don’t know what I was expecting from the ending; I didn’t think Catherine and George’s guiding spirits would battle like incarnations from a green lantern ring, or Pokémon in a gym, but I did expect something neater, and quicker, than George replicating the obtruding painting. Very strange. Clearly, George backed himself into a corner and had no choice but to give his spirit over to where evil lives. He’d tried to kill everyone who was onto his wicked ways, and he was still found out. Good triumphed, bested by what I’ll call the ‘sisterhood of the afterlife’.
They say the best way to get over your fears is through exposure, and I probably forget how many horror movies I’ve actually exposed myself to these days; I’ve watched, and reviewed, and am up to date with American Horror Story as well for goodness’ sake, as melodramatic as that can be. And I think this wuss can say, most movies aren’t as scary as they advertise to be, except for Hereditary; man, that’s lethal. I have just never liked the idea of ghosts. I’ve never liked ghosts. But Things Heard & Seen gets marks for being entertaining; I hesitate to say without knowing better, that I bet it’s not the most rounded and concise adaptation of the book All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage, since I feel like a lot of the characters should have more to say, but I get enough of the story to enjoy it as something a little different for me. And I’m sure I’m going to be okay… let’s just see how I get through the night.
3.5
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