The Little Stranger Reviews
March 4, 2020
The players are technically impressive but fail to make any significant emotional impact.
July 3, 2019
There are moments of stark, unexpected violence, and chilling moments that hint at the ghosts within, but mostly The Little Stranger is a horror mystery that revels in its ambiguity. But the near two hour run time feels overlong.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
June 5, 2019
Casting issues aside, Abrahamson delivers an engrossing dark tale of the struggle to find solid ground when all around crumbles in a gothic maelstrom.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 25, 2018
[Domhnall Gleeson] keeps Faraday's wounds painfully close to the surface... Faraday's bitterness works like a depressant, consuming him but also the movie, and robbing it of some of the electrical charge vital for fully effective horror.
September 25, 2018
If you love strange little things, you'll be smitten.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
September 24, 2018
Why... does this handsomely mounted tale of a country doctor and a seemingly cursed aristocratic family not quite work?
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 21, 2018
It's brave enough to take its time.
September 21, 2018
There could be rational explanations for all these things, but the film invites us to lean gently into the fantastic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
September 20, 2018
Its shivers are sophisticated, and not easily shrugged off.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 20, 2018
Abrahamson has taken [Waters'] idea and run with it. He's made a movie that's a Brexit Britain parable about the intoxicating, if futile, allure of national identity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
September 19, 2018
Beautifully directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the film evokes this period in a way that is both nostalgic and frequently chilling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
September 19, 2018
With Gleeson, the female stars clinch this drama of dread and desperation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
September 19, 2018
The house itself is realised with terrific creepiness and claustrophobia but ultimately its cupboards feel bare.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 18, 2018
Lacks the sting in the tail of something like the similarly post-War The Others, but it offers a soupy atmosphere of low-level dread and paints a devastating portrait of a vanishing age.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
September 17, 2018
We know everyone involved in this film can do better.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
September 7, 2018
Occasionally spooky, but more often snoozy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
September 6, 2018
A deft exploration of controlling and entitled masculinity.
August 31, 2018
A hypnotic and haunting tale of how the past can grab hold of the flesh-and-blood present and squeeze. Don't let this mesmerizing mystery slip between the cracks of studio neglect and marketing indifference. It's spellbinding.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
August 31, 2018
Everything here is precise: Abrahamson's direction, the understated performances, the intrusive sounds that stop just shy of jarring. The result is more sad and spooky than suspenseful or scary, an effect that seems entirely, and pleasingly, intentional.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
August 31, 2018
At times, each of the main characters has us wondering what's going on beneath the surface. Who, if anyone, is to be trusted?
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4