First of all, let me say I have watched the new sequels of Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible, and both these sequels felt like tiresome theme park rides that were so long I thought I might need a colostomy bag. So I'm not reviewing either of those films this week.
You know one of the great things about having a few streaming services at home? They allow you to watch the recent releases you may have missed at the movie theater. That's what happened with me a few days ago when I watched the psychological thriller Resurrection. Written and directed by a mostly unknown Andrew Semans (Nancy, Please, 2012), Resurrection stars Rebecca Hall (The Night House, 2020) as a successful biologist and caring single mother whose peaceful life is put under attack when an abusive man reappears from her past.
Through simple editing and terse dialogue, this film is a darkly mental game of cat and mouse that gradually turns deadly. Because of its slow-burn pace and its increasingly cerebral themes, this film gave me vibes similar to other recent releases Watcher (2022) and Infinity Pool (from January this year).
Resurrection is clearly a juicy platform for its star Rebecca Hall who gives a fiercely contained performance of straightforward decisiveness that tragically gives way to unraveling paranoia. At approximately 37 minutes into this film, Rebecca Hall gives a monologue describing an abusive relationship during her youth, what the abuse felt like, and how she survived it. This monologue is eight minutes long, and I was fixated on the screen every second of it.
The quiet intensity of this monologue is so believable and so unadorned that the slow close-up of Rebecca Hall's face will make you feel a claustrophobic agitation. Resurrection is not a flashy or sexy film with a lot of twists or characters, but that doesn't mean it's boring or lacking anything.
It's a stripped-down mystery that forces the main character to confront her inability to protect her own child and her inability to escape the tenacious bruises of her past suffering. The ending will keep you guessing (which I guess is part of why this film wasn't more popular during its release in 2022), and Rebecca Hall will keep me wondering what film she will do next.
The artsy lens through which the conclusion is shown might be frustrating for some viewers, because important things are left unexplained. But that's part of the nefarious effect of this film. Just like the main character who fights for her life, even you will start to question what is real and what is not.
I'm so glad I happened to find this film on Hulu.
