The Turning Review (Film, 2020)
Content warning: violence against women, animal abuse (simulated)
The greatest trick Henry James ever pulled was getting people to believe The Turn of the Screw was a truly ambiguous story. There is doubt cast in the text, but it’s hard to call it ambiguous. He wrote a Gothic ghost story where the response to every possible haunted moment was suggesting the protagonist might not be sane. After all, what governess in her right mind would accuse innocent children of plotting against her by ignoring the existence of ghosts she can see plain as daylight throughout the house? At the time, not slapping a logical explanation onto this kind of tale was radical, which in turn broke expectations enough to make audiences genuinely unsure of what happened.
Flash forward 122 years to The Turning. Director Floria Sigismondi’s spin on The Turn of the Screw is an ambiguous text in a way that can only happen onscreen. There is no easy answer. There is no right or wrong interpretation. It’s a series of events inspired by the Henry James’ story told in a specific but not necessarily chronological order.
The changes to the story are clear right from the start. The year is 1994. Kate, a public school teacher, is hired as a live-in private tutor for a young girl who recently lost her parents. After saying goodbye to her roommate and her institutionalized mother, she arrives at the remote mansion. Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, informs her that she is the new governess, not just a tutor, and in charge of educating and rearing young Flora. Miles, Flora’s brother, returns home after being expelled from boarding school for violently attacking another student.
Those familiar with the novel will see immediate changes beyond the much more modern setting. Giving Kate connections outside of the house opens up The Turning to really be her own story. She has two people who know who she is and act as a sounding board to walk her through what’s happening. This governess is actually chosen for the position, rather than applying and being convinced to take the job by the uncle of the poor orphans, and has already accepted the job before the story begins. Most importantly, we actually find out why Miles was expelled right at the start.
Part of the mystery of The Turn of the Screw is what Miles did to get kicked out of school. He’s extremely rich and from a prestigious family; the crime had to be severe to see him punished and we just don’t know what it is. In The Turning, Kate is given a reason to immediately distrust the boy. She takes the phone call from the headmaster explaining what is probably best described as attempted murder. This, in turn, is dismissed by Mrs. Grose as an impossibility. The Turning is an active exploration of gaslighting and privilege, modernizing the Gothic tropes of the original story into something that feels more immediate and true. Kate is told she must respect privilege and standing. She is to take control of the children, but has no authority to do anything but say “yes” to whatever the children want because the children are considered more important than she will ever be in society.
The Turning leans into some big horror tropes—being lured into a new position with misleading information, an unwell harbinger warning of the challenges ahead, an oversized and out of place mansion (practically a castle) with very few people living in it—but nothing too unexpected. The evil child tropes of horror partly originate from The Turn of the Screw, so their inclusion can’t really be considered a fault in Carey and Chad Hayes’ screenplay. Sigismondi’s visual references to The Innocents, Les diaboliques, and similar maybe-paranormal thrillers and horror films are clever homages justified, again, by the shared inspiration of the source text.
It is the visual language of the film that is the most intriguing. The central mystery of The Turning is what happened to Miss Jessel. She is the governess who left with no notice before Kate took the job, but Kate swears she sees her spirit in the house. This ghost has a tangible, physical presence in the house. She interacts with the space and people around her. She is also soaking wet. Miss Jessel has a simple white nightgown and long, flowing blonde hair. Her look and body position are clearly inspired by the classic oil paintings of Hamlet’s Ophelia drowning in the brook, creating a ghost that is equally tragic and unnerving onscreen.
The Turning is filled with clever details like this. Water plays such a critical part in any version of this story. The estate is surrounded by water. The governess is typically tricked into believing someone has fallen into the water by the children. Miss Jessel is wet, leaving damp footprints leading right out the window and dripping water on the governess in their many encounters. The story hinges on dark, murky water as a metaphor for secrets hiding just beneath the surface of the family’s legacy, a direct nod to the original story but amplified by the anachronism of the rigid social hierarchy of the Victorian Era.
Sigismondi takes it a step further and this decision is my favorite aspect of the entire film. Kate’s mom refuses to do her drawings and paintings in the activity room at her hospital. She has taken her supplies to the bottom of an empty pool. She is drowning in her creative thought, unable to separate herself from her obsessive tributes to her daughter long enough to come up for air and rejoin normal society. Kate is overwhelmed by her mother’s unexpected turn in mental wellness. Even when she doesn’t visit, her mom mails her the artwork she creates from the depths of the empty pool. Kate takes the job partly to get away from her. Her mother, however, is also that horror film harbinger figure and very well may be predicting Kate’s future and the dangers she will face in her increasingly dark and violent art.
The Turning is a horror film driven by clever visual elements. Even the characters are placed in opposition by color. Everything associated with Miles is black and dark orange and everything associated with Kate is white and light orange (down to Miles killing a black-spotted koi and Kate purchasing a white-spotted koi to replace it). Their color palettes inch closer and closer together throughout the film, though they never match or quite see eye to eye on anything. Mrs. Groves is pale and in shades of gray, a relic of the past, and she forces those colors on Flora to claim ownership over her and the family legacy.
This is a horror film where the pattern of the wallpaper (but not the wallpaper itself) begins to decay as the story progresses, going from a lovely scene of nesting birds and flowers to a grim vision of dead birds and barren branches. The home is filled with artwork and mannequins representing the tragic history of the family, interfered with time and again by Miles and Kate refusing to play by the rules of the household. Everything that is perfectly cared for and positioned just so in the house begins to shatter and break as Kate tries to prove the existence of ghost, the depth of Miles’ problems, and her own sanity.
There is no linear sense of time passing as the days blur together. The children and Mrs. Grouse always wear the same clothing. The house is so large that the lights are on even in the middle of the day. The children have run of the house, so even trying to gauge time by Kate’s lessons tells you nothing. Kate is trapped in an endless cycle of childish pranks, cruel words, and paranormal encounters, the same way her mother is trapped in the pool and the koi are trapped in the pond.
Classic scenes you would expect from The Turn of the Screw are presented as dream sequences that feel more real than the actual events that happen in the story. They grow longer and longer as the film progresses, making it hard to keep track of what Kate really experiences in the house. It’s actually quite impressive that Sigismondi can play so well in the expected territory of a Gothic ghost story in the context of a film that throws out the cinematic rulebook for horror.
The Turning is a fascinating film. It grows in unexpected ways once the story gets going. Where Henry James created a false sense of ambiguity in the original novella, Floria Sigismondi refuses to answer anything. The line between reality and dream is blurred so often that you have to choose what you think is actually happening. This is a horror film meant to be read like a book and a passive watch will not be a rewarding one.
The Turning is currently playing in theaters.
