‘The Dreadful’ Review: Marcia Gay Harden Steals Medieval Horror Fable From ‘Game of Thrones’ Stars
Every artist dreams of being adjectived, which is a word I just verbed and my spell check refuses to acknowledge — much like the word “verbed,” in which I literally verbed the word “verb.” This is how stories that evoke the strangling bureaucratic social horrors of Franz Kafka become “Kafkaesque,” and thrillers about everyday heroes in paranoid, high-concept, life-or-death situations become “Hitchcockian.” What a compliment, to have your name associated with a whole genre, theme and vibe.
Of course, this also happens to works of art, when perhaps the filmmaker is a little less known. Natasha Kermani’s “The Dreadful,” a grim supernatural tale set in the 15th century, tells the story of two women who become thieves and murderers after the man of the house dies in the War of the Roses. Another man gets between them, leading to a brewing conflict within the household, culminating in more violence and horror. Kermani’s film doesn’t have a lot to do with the overall filmography of Japanese director Kaneto Shindō, but it’s definitely a riff on his 1964 classic “Onibaba,” which makes “The Dreadful” either “Onibabaesque,” or at least “Onibabish.”
If you’ve never seen “Onibaba,” stop what you’re doing and come back after you’ve eaten your broccoli. Or just continue, and learn that Kermani’s film — adapted from the same Shin Buddhist parable — is an uneven new take. “The Dreadful” captures a palpable sense of despair and, to be fair, dread. But the mixed bag cast quickly becomes a distraction and leaves the film wanting.
“Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner plays Anne, whose husband went off to war and left her, and his mother Morwen, to fend for themselves. Winter is coming (ahem), and the women have to fend for themselves to survive. Morwen, played by Marcia Gay Harden, starts stealing from their neighbors and then murdering hapless passersby. When Anne’s childhood friend Jago, played by fellow “Game of Thrones” alumni Kit Harington, brings news that Anne’s husband was slaughtered, Morwen picks up the pace in her murder spree, and forces Anne to participate.
Anne is a pious young woman, or at least she wants to be. She has nothing, and is increasingly tortured by her mother-in-law, but she attends church every week and tries to overcome her greed for her neighbor’s wealth and family. Which, yes, is clearly envy, not greed, but Anne calls it greed anyway. Either she’s not paying attention in mass or her town’s got a sub-optimal priest. Morwen is full of greed, nobody’s arguing that, but Anne’s envy may be her undoing and, when she warms to Jago’s advances, her lust may or may not help.
Oh yeah, and there’s a supernatural monster knight wandering in the woods. Anne sees him beheading people, but nobody else believes her, and yes, obviously this will be important later.
The superficial selling point, I suspect, for “The Dreadful” is seeing Turner and Harington wear medieval costumes again. This time they make goo-goo eyes at each other instead of playing siblings who spend at least seven seasons living on opposite sides of the world. Turner is the literal star, and she wisely locates the sin within Anne’s heart, then tamps it all the way down with good intentions. Anne’s story yearns to be feminist in an era when a woman’s independence was beset on all sides by social expectations, religious oppression and threats of starvation and violence. She’s excellent within that milieu.
She’s outshined, however, by Harden, who plays Morwen like a wicked witch, selfishly clinging to Anne like a lifeline while dragging her into Hell. Harden expertly swaps faces from a put-upon old lady who would die without her daughter-in-law’s sacrifices, and a diabolical villain curling her fingers around a murder weapon as though her hands could somehow lick their lips.
She’s such a scene-stealing presence that she can’t help but overshadow Turner, but to be fair this is literal the dynamic between their characters, and by the end writer/director Kermani proves the imbalance was intentional. It just wasn’t always serving the best needs of the narrative, since so much of “The Dreadful” is from Anne’s meek perspective, so whenever Harden is off-screen we wonder when she’ll return.
And then there’s Harington, who tried to spin out of “Game of Thrones” as a Hollywood heartthrob, in the enjoyably campy “Gladiator”-meets-“Titanic” knockoff, “Pompeii.” In Kermani’s film Harington is in character actor mode, but in an unusually literal way. He’s not so much playing a character as he is playing a character actor, specifically Tom Hardy at his grumbliest. Harington can grumble, nobody’s saying otherwise. He just can’t seem to grumble without grumbling like Hardy would grumble. He kind of gets away with it but it’s still amusing, and the fact that Harden is next-level good in this make’s Harington’s “Tom Hardly” persona extra distracting.
Kermani’s film is no “Onibaba,” but that’s an absurdly high bar. Besides, I suspect many people in its modern audience won’t have that frame of reference. By itself, free from that contrast, it’s a mixed-bag but still potent tale about religion, feminism and the evils of war. “The Dreadful” is worth watching for Harden’s perfidious performance alone. And whenever she’s not on-screen it’s worth the wait.
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