![]() The uneasy dynamic between the transplants and the townies (or the “rich horsey weekenders” and the “full-time rednecks,” as Catherine’s friend quips) is one of several provocative themes the filmmakers nod at without pursuing.īefore long, things are going bump in the night - or, in this case, lights in the house are flickering, radios switching on and off, and a smell of gas wafting up from the basement into the bedroom. Each is also drawn to a younger object of desire: Catherine bonds with hunky handyman Eddie (Alex Neustaedter), who, in one of the film’s few truly arresting images, is first seen from behind, staring at the house alongside younger brother Cole (Jack Gore) George flirts shamelessly with Eddie’s alluring friend Willis ( Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer). George picks out a run-down farmhouse to buy - the always-welcome Karen Allen plays the friendly local real estate agent - and spends his days on campus while Catherine busies herself with renovations. Catherine is giving up her job restoring religious murals, which she seems OK with - though a glimpse of her purging the nibble of cake she’s just allowed herself hints at a darkness beneath her placid domestic glow. Golden boy academic George has accepted a teaching position at a liberal arts college upstate, where the two will relocate with young daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). We flash back six months to a party hosted by the man, George Claire, and his wife, Catherine (Seyfried), at their New York City apartment. A few shots later, he’s running toward the camera with a little girl in his arms. He looks up, realizing that the crimson leak is coming from the ceiling. A man (Norton) pulls into the garage of a ramshackle rural home only to have drops of blood splatter the windshield - and then, when he steps out of the car, his face. The movie opens on a note of auspicious creepiness. It’s an odd match of a screenplay (adapted by Berman and Pulcini) that’s too obvious, telegraphing rather than teasing out its twists, and direction that’s overly timid one gets the sense that the filmmakers are checking off genre tropes and tricks from a list instead of finding ways to invest them with fresh chills or shivers. But Berman and Pulcini’s failure to generate suspense becomes problematic during a second half that settles into standard psycho-spouse thriller rhythms with some half-assed ghost-story and feminist elements tossed in. Things Heard & Seen is highly watchable, with an effective 40 minutes or so of character-driven buildup grounded in Seyfried’s sympathetic performance. ![]() It’s the latest in the long line of movies about women unraveled by sinister forces unseen and very much seen, in the form of caddish, gaslighting husbands (from classics like, duh, Gaslight and Rosemary’s Baby to less distinguished examples like What Lies Beneath, mother! and Seyfried’s own recent You Should Have Left). An adaptation of Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Things Cease to Appear, the 1980-set film follows a couple of art historians ( Amanda Seyfried and James Norton) from Manhattan to the Hudson Valley, where both their marriage and the fixer-upper they purchase start showing signs of … dysfunction. I wish I could say they break the blah streak in their Netflix neo-Gothic Things Heard & Seen, which finds the pair tackling a different genre - supernatural horror - with customary professionalism but no discernible spark of passion or purpose. ![]() The pacing, control of tone and command over their star-strewn casts vary from film to film, but most of Berman and Pulcini’s work has been stuck on that frustrating spectrum of fine. ![]() Even their stronger outings - Cinema Verite, a 2011 HBO drama about the making of PBS’ docu/reality series An American Family, for example - leave an impression of surfaces nimbly skimmed rather than depths plumbed. Instead of cultivating the visual wit and scruffy emotional intricacy that made American Splendor such a treat, Berman and Pulcini have drifted toward a kind of shrug-worthy, middlebrow indie-ish proficiency, crafting stories of oddballs and outsiders but smoothing the rougher edges and taming the messiness into tastefully offbeat packages. Writers: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (adapted from the novel by Elizabeth Brundage) Murray Abrahamĭirectors: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini Cast: Amanda Seyfried, James Norton, Natalia Dyer, Alex Neustaedter, Rhea Seehorn, Michael O'Keefe, Karen Allen, Jack Gore and F.
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