Film Review: The Little Stranger

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter

Running time: 111 mins

Ideally, I would not like to dedicate much time reviewing this film, as I have already wasted a sizeable chunk of my life watching it. Painfully slow-paced, ambiguous and dull, watching The Little Stranger was an ordeal and more than just a little bit strange.

Set in Warwickshire in 1948,The Little Stranger follows the character of Dr Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) who begins the film by visiting, in his capacity as a doctor, the once grandiose Hundreds Hall. The Hall belongs to the Ayres family, and is now close to dilapidation and inhabited by Caroline Ayres (Ruth Wilson) her brother Roderick Ayres (Will Poulter), their mother Mrs Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), and their housemaid Betty (Liv Hill) a girl who, in the opening scene, is feigning illness in the hope that it will be enough to be sent back home. From this early detail, I thought this was going to be a clear cut, perhaps formulaic, but reliable ghost story, that begins with the housemaid who wishes to escape the paranormal horrors of the house she works in, which the audience would soon be confronted with too. I thought Dr Faraday would be unwittingly coerced into working for this odd family, and would bear witness, and try to defeat, a paranormal threat.  

What also fuelled my early assumption of the nature of the plot was that the lady of the house, Caroline, is instantly characterised as brusque and to the point - not unpleasant or unlikeable, but it made me consider that her demeanour is moulded and hardened by some sort of undisclosed family trauma, perhaps related to the possible hauntings. Roderick, who first welcomes the doctor inside, has half of his face horrifically burned, and walks with a limp. Perhaps a starkly visual representation of a family of troubled, damaged people. The opening of the film is acceptably paced and discloses nothing of the travesty of a film that follows. I would have been happy to watch a film which mirrored my own assumptions, but how wrong my assumptions were.

After this opening scene, the doctor, at this point still likeable enough, becomes a friend of Caroline’s as he offers to treat the traumatized Roderick’s maimed leg, his injuries obtained when serving as a RAF pilot in the Second World War. He agrees to the treatment, and Dr Faraday visits and administers it over a period of weeks. The film focuses on this story arc for more than half an hour, enough time to get the audience invested in it. The single highlight of the film comes at this point, during a scene in which a party at Hundreds Hall ends in horror. While the Ayres, some aristocratic guests and Dr Faraday celebrate Roderick selling some family land which could see the family’s fortunes reversed, the previously docile Ayres family dog brutally mauls a little girl in attendance. The sounds of the screams and the commotion is truly horrific, and I could see the audience around me putting their hands to their mouths in shock at the sight of the bloodied girl. This is the film’s first hint of anything untoward happening at the house, and it feels like a relief after a lengthy exposition. Great, I thought - the film was finally about to get going.

Tantalisingly, Roderick informs Dr Faraday before the incident that he knows something bad is going to happen that night. Now I began to question if Roderick had something to do with the ghost story that the film will develop into - is he a conduit to spirits? Is he haunted by more than just his experiences of war? How intriguing! Despite my well-reasoned hopes, next time the traumatized Roderick is in the film he inexplicably sets fire to an inconsequential bookshelf in the house and is never in the film again, only mentioned in passing to say he’s been sent to a psychiatrist. A ‘no’ to all my questions, then, and I feel cheated by the amount of time wasted on an inconsequential story arc. It doesn’t feel as if his behaviour was due to some paranormal force that he is trying to warn the doctor about, it just feels abrupt and nonsensical. The Little Stranger once again reverts to the blank page of its beginning, and, as a result, fails to re-build my intrigue.

With my attention on the wane and the film not revealing anything further regarding the supernatural, the film lumbers on. Next, we are informed, in the form of a flashback, that Dr Faraday visited the grounds of the house as a child with his mother after the end of the First World War during a celebratory fete. His mother used to work as a housemaid at Hundreds Hall, and the celebration saw the different classes come together. He recounts this story to Caroline, and he tells her he was an underprivileged child, so during the fete, he sneaked into the house and broke off a section of the house’s ornate wall carving as a memento, but was caught and admonished by his mother. This flashback, and Dr Faraday’s social standing, seems to be the bizarre lynchpin of the film. The doctor seems to have a chip on his shoulder about his disadvantaged upbringing throughout the film, even though no character, either in the flashback or in the present, mentions it to belittle him. His voiceover regularly repeats how much visiting Hundreds Hall as a boy meant to him, and how he, as a son of a housemaid, was jealous of the little girl who lived there. This is mentioned so much, and in such an irritating woe-is-me manner, that his character swiftly becomes unlikeable, as it seems he has an unhealthy complex about it. 

I could have accepted his feelings and been endeared to him if we see him experience hardship or injustice as a working-class child, but we don’t, nor do we see him experience any obstacle whatsoever to becoming the well-mannered, well-spoken adult doctor we are presented with. He also starts to have an unintentionally creepy fondness for Caroline, who he convinces to marry without so much as a sentence from her to accept his proposal, and without wooing her beforehand apart from an awkward fumble in a car in the woods in the middle of the night. Her charmingly realised character is the only saving grace the film has, Ruth Wilson proving she is an accomplished actress.

Perhaps you are thinking the film is purposefully crafted so that the audience begin to dislike Dr Faraday, and he is being corrupted by some sort of yet to be mentioned evil that is emanating from the house, the same evil that corrupted the dog. Or you are thinking, even more abstractly, that his presence at Hundreds Hall is the cause of the supernatural forces in the film, which after a monumental wait make themselves known more firmly towards the end of the film. If the latter is the case - and is the only plot I can dredge up from the murky waters of the film - then it is about as clear as the foggy Warwickshire countryside Hundreds Hall is situated within.

If Dr Faraday, as a child sneaking into the hall, is The Little Stranger the title refers to, then this could explain the unlikable side of him - his lingering jealously of the higher class, and inability to accept his own social standing is manifesting itself as a supernatural force. If this is the case, then it is bizarre when you consider that in the last act of the film, we are overtly led to believe that the horror is caused by the ghost of the girl who used to live at the house, who, as a child, Dr Faraday was jealous of at the fete. Apparently, she died as a child, a carelessly tacked on afterthought that is revealed late on. If the girl’s ghost being the cause is a red herring, then the other theory that states the ghost-like happenings are caused by Dr Faraday is so ambiguously communicated that the red herring has no impact at all - rather it leaves the audience in a confused limbo.

What is clear and undisputable is that Dr Faraday is the main protagonist of the film. The Little Stranger invests so much run-time focusing on him, and then suddenly carves out a plot that is so ambiguously realised that he suddenly seems unlikeable for no discernible reason. To clumsily change the character that beforehand has been leading the audience through the film is a guaranteed way to ensure your audience disengages with the film, and feels cheated.

Did you know? The Little Stranger is the second collaboration between actors Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter, with the first being The Revenant.

The Little Stranger is screening at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 4 October