J Paul Johnson
Rebecca Hall can sell nearly anything. And sell she must in Resurrection, a morbidly dark and surreal drama from writer-director Andrew Semans, a film which begins planted in the grim reality of the everyday yet concludes in an implausibly nightmarish scenario spawned from its leads’ tortured obsessions. Lending an arthouse sensibility to the lowbrow parental-revenge thriller subgenre, Resurrection pits its hero against a grooming, gaslighting tormentor from her past.
Hall, excellent as ever, plays Margaret, a successful academic raising her nearly-college-age daughter (Grace Kaufman) alone. Her past trauma seems to have triggered an obsessive control over her daughter’s need for independence just as the source of that trauma, a mysterious man from her past named David (Roth), reappears, at first benignly but then with greater obvious malice.
Margaret’s intelligence is one she struggles to apply to her own personal life. While she can diagnose and address a younger colleague’s relationship with dexterity and grace, she seems less able to manage her own relationships: her love life is limited to a series of quick hookups with a co-worker, brief f*cks designed to release endorphins like the brisk runs she favors more so than establish any kind of interpersonal intimacy.
Just like in an old-time melodrama—say, for instance, Mildred Pierce—the second the protagonist prioritizes her sex life over parenting, the daughter is punished. In this instance it’s a bicycle accident that rips a two-foot-long wound in Abbie’s leg. Was it David’s doing, somehow? No matter: within days Abbie will be prancing about with no effects at all. Semans’ plot plants more than a few points that simply don’t matter, such as a random tooth appearing in Abbie’s wallet, and are never explained.
Hall works hard to make Margaret a compelling character, and the past trauma she suffered at David’s hands haunts her, palpably. Roth makes for a convincingly weird presence as David, a man who once used his control over a much-younger Margaret to traumatize and abuse—and now has returned to do so again, but with a weird threat to wield.
I can’t discuss the specifics of that threat without divulging Resurrection‘s big reveal, one that becomes not just a plot point but the film’s major conceit. Margaret is traumatized by David’s reminding her—at first verbally and later more viscerally—of a child they once shared together. And while the turns the plot takes require a significant suspension of disbelief as they veer wildly into the surreal, the ghost of the unborn makes for a compelling nightmare in America’s current post-Roe landscape. Margaret’s trauma escalates from feverish visions to a life-or-death fight for control, with David the tormenter gleefully exercising his upper hand.
Some viewers might find this trajectory utter claptrap, a divergence from accepted reality and biological fact into the realm of the absurd. Yet as Margaret, a hyper-intelligent professional woman whose regimental practices can’t solve her emotional conflicts, Hall sells every scene with a fierce, fiery commitment. Her piercing eyes, lithe figure, and quick gait make for a memorable character as a professional academic whose maternal conflicts can’t be solved with order and structure. Almost by herself, she elevates Resurrection from corny genre flick to a slick, clever arthouse film.
Hall—the acclaimed director of Passing and veteran of roles in Vicky Christina Barcelona, The Town, The Prestige, and Professor Marston and the Wonder Women—is onscreen for nearly every minute of the film and invests every energy imaginable in making Margaret’s idiosyncrasies and weaknesses believable. For all her excellence as an actor, let’s hope she’s given more opportunities behind the camera. It’s harder to know Roth’s David: he’s clearly the gaslighting groomer of Margaret’s past, but at times he seems to exist purely for the purpose of her torment. Still, he makes for a frighteningly weird villain. Kaufman, whose character is largely oblivious to the source of her mother’s breakdown, is excellent as a teen typically consumed with her own independence.
Semans’ direction is more confident than his script. As a thriller, many of its scenes are appropriately pulse-pounding. In fact, the film so adroitly taunts and teases with Wyatt Garfield’s excellent cinematography, Ron Dulin’s taut editing, and Jim WIlliams’ effective score that one can almost—almost—overlook its gaps in continuity and logic. And, as Resurrection marches towards its violent, inexorable, and gobsmacking conclusion, it does so by reminding all of us of the sometimes-very real physical, palpable manifestations of trauma and grief.
Resurrection appears in theaters on July 29th and on demand August 5th, with release on the streaming service Shudder to follow in November 2022.
