Things Heard & Seen review: Netflix brings us 2021’s weirdest horror story

Look a bit deeper at nearly any respectable haunted-house film, and also you’ll virtually all the time see a narrative about individuals who really feel trapped by some bigger facet of their lives. Horror-movie protagonists coping with an evil doll can a minimum of attempt to do away with it; slasher victims can a minimum of attempt to run away from the hazard. And folks being threatened by one thing they don’t perceive, whether or not it’s a curse or a creature, can all the time examine and attempt to come to phrases with the unknown. However a home represents a dedication, a sunk price that’s extraordinarily troublesome to stroll away from. In a film like Netflix’s baffling new horror-drama Issues Heard & Seen, the haunted home is a metaphor as a lot as a horror system, a logo of a spot that must be a heat, protecting house however isn’t, and an emblem of a dedication that’s troublesome to flee. And as a metaphor, it’s probably the most constant and compelling factor in a bizarrely confused film.

Amanda Seyfried and The Nevers’ James Norton star as Catherine and George Claire, a married couple elevating a 4-year-old daughter, Franny, in 1980 Manhattan. Catherine has a satisfying job as an knowledgeable artwork restorer, however when George declares to their mates that he’s accomplished his dissertation and has been provided a educating job at a non-public school in upstate New York, she drops her profession meekly, with out grievance, telling an in depth buddy that she owes George her assist. There’s clearly one thing improper in Catherine’s life, provided that she’s ravenous herself and forcing herself to vomit up what meals she does eat, and even early on, she flinches as, as an illustration, George picks out their new house within the tiny city of Chosen, pressuring her when she exhibits even token resistance.

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It seems that she’s proper to be unnerved by his insistence on the home: The place has seen some horrors, and there’s an energetic supernatural presence there. The slow-burn ghost story that follows begins out in response to the same old haunted-house guidelines, a minimum of in most respects: Electrical lights flicker, Franny sees a mysterious feminine determine in her room, objects round the home transfer with out being touched, and so forth. However one factor that’s instantly uncommon in Issues Heard & Seen is that Catherine doesn’t appear notably unnerved by the apparition or the results. She instantly begins to sympathize with the family ghost, and when George’s boss Floyd (F. Murray Abraham, all the time gratifying) offers her his heat and supportive theories on spiritualism, she’s instantly in favor of a seance — with George, a disdainful cynic, distinctly not invited.

Issues Heard & Seen, based mostly on Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Issues Stop to Seem, spends most of its runtime constructing an unconventional ghost story out of a completely standard relationship drama. Catherine and George’s marriage appears an terrible lot just like the equally fraying relationship in Sean Durkin’s The Nest, with a good share of The Proficient Mister Ripley sprinkled in. He’s a liar and a cheat who blames his decisions on her habits. In the meantime, she’s gaslighting him about her consuming dysfunction, and concealing how depressing she is whereas additionally discovering causes to be passive-aggressively unkind to him. The otherworldly power in the home is drawn to their battle and their resentments — or presumably is feeding it? That’s one of many issues that’s manifestly unclear proper as much as the abrupt, baffling ending.

The best way the narrative falls aside is a selected disgrace, since for a lot of its run, the movie is a compelling melodrama, an “elevated horror” story that limits a budget shocks and leap scares, and replaces them with its personal uncommon guidelines for the supernatural. As one customer tells Catherine, evil spirits are solely drawn to evil folks, which implies except she’s harboring evil herself, the ghost that’s making an attempt to make contact along with her is a form and benevolent one. On this explicit fantasy, ghosts are particularly drawn towards individuals who mirror them in some methods, and Catherine’s ghost could also be responding to her troubled marriage.

The story heads in some pretty over-the-top instructions because the surprising reveals pile up, however by absolutely mixing a supernatural horror story with a dreary marital drama, writer-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor, The Nanny Diaries) kick some contemporary vitality into each genres, and steer them away from the same old predictable buildings. As gripping as haunted-house films like His Home, The Conjuring, Stir of Echoes, and even the OG Poltergeist have been, and as a lot as they play with the concept of being certain to a spot and fearing it on the identical time, all of them comply with patterns of escalation that principally quantity to “scary ghost retains getting scarier.” Issues Heard & Seen good points significantly simply by subverting that expectation.

Anna Kooris/NETFLIX

However the martial drama doesn’t go as far off the acquainted roads, partly as a result of Berman and Pulcini by no means absolutely join the best way Catherine feels tied to the home, and the best way she feels tied to her floundering marriage. Seyfried offers her some presence and enchantment, however she by no means has a lot company as a personality. Catherine begins off crushed down by elements which might be by no means absolutely defined: Is her consuming dysfunction meant as a clue to the stress she’s been beneath in her relationship, or is it meant to excuse her lack of vitality and focus? Are there concrete causes she’s afraid to withstand George, or does her obedience come from her household historical past or persona? Who’s she, actually? As attainable solutions do begin to come into focus, and as she learns extra about who George actually is, she takes much less and fewer motion, withdrawing right into a snide, petulant passivity that isn’t compelling in a protagonist, and that solely serves the narrative by drawing it out longer so George can get away with much more.

After which there’s the laughable last sequence, which not solely assumes the viewers has completely internalized the movie’s invented guidelines for the supernatural, however can intuit many extra of them as nicely. Additional, it assumes that they’re going to be prepared to go together with ridiculous and unjustified occasions, so long as they really feel a minimum of considerably like justice. The ending is a daring play in a film filled with daring performs, however it appears designed extra to whip up dialogue than to attract the narrative collectively, or to offer viewers both a horror-movie catharsis or a marriage-drama decision. Haunted-house films are normally about folks caught in a single place, and missing any good choices for getting away. Issues Heard & Seen continues that development, and for a lot of its runtime, it makes Catherine’s incapability to flee right into a memorable conundrum. However the film’s eventual collapse is inescapable as nicely, and when it goes down, it takes the entire film’s gathered goodwill with it.

Issues Heard & Seen is now streaming on Netflix.