My Thoughts on The Dreadful
How do you take something as stripped down and primal as Onibaba and move it to 15th-century England without losing its teeth?
Well, The Dreadful has tried to, and to be fair, shifting the setting is a strong choice on paper, but unfortunately the movie what to do with it once it gets there.
There’s a version of this story that feels suffocating, where you can almost see it, but instead here, what we get is something that feels a bit too carefully arranged, composed, and polished - too aware of how it looks.
Sophie Turner carries most of the film, and she does it well, as I thought she was genuinely strong here - she doesn’t overplay the emotion, and she knows when to hold back - but the character she’s given feels oddly steady for someone meant to be trapped, as Anne is supposed to be cornered by survival and loyalty, yet she often seems like she’s already mapping her way out.
It’s frustrating because Turner clearly has the ability to show that kind of internal struggle, and there are moments when something flickers behind her eyes and I thought, there it is, but then the script moves on, and the tension never fully tightens.
Marcia Gay Harden, on the other hand, wastes no time, as she steps into the frame already dialed up, where her character is intense from the start, which in theory isn’t a problem, as I like strong antagonists.
But there’s also no build, no slow turn of the screw, and it’s control and intimidation right away, and it just stays there, and you never get any sense of the layers unfolding - a story like this needs escalation, and it should feel like you’re sinking deeper into something uncomfortable, but it never does.
Kit Harington does bring some presence to his role though, that much is clear, because he understands how to hold the screen, and his chemistry with Turner works, but his character feels like a tool rather than a person - he exists to create friction, not to embody it.
Too often he feels like a narrative device instead of someone shaped by this harsh world the film keeps telling me exists - and that’s the bigger issue
The world doesn’t feel harsh enough, where you sense the daily grind of survival, as fifteenth-century England should feel heavy, social hierarchy should press down on every interaction, and nature should feel indifferent at best, hostile at worst.
Instead, the setting feels like a backdrop nicely dressed, but thin, where the danger feels staged.
Now I certainly don’t mind slow burns - in fact, I prefer them when they are done well - but slow requires tension under the surface, and here you are waiting for that dread to settle in, but it never quite does.
Scenes start build toward something unsettling, then stop just short, and the film flirts with folk horror but doesn’t commit, where it hints at suspense but avoids going too far - with that said, I can see what it’s aiming for, as there are ideas at play here that could have been sharp, but I just don’t think the execution matches the ambition.
It all feels stitched together from different tones - one moment suggests a grim, morally messy story, while the next leans toward something cleaner and more triumphant, and the ending is where that becomes most obvious.
Instead of embracing ambiguity or consequence, it opts for a safer resolution, where there’s a clear empowerment beat, and while I don’t dislike empowerment as a theme, I just didn’t think it fit the atmosphere the film had been building, or trying to build.
The conclusion smooths things over when it should have left them complicated, and it’s tidy in a way the rest of the story isn’t brave enough to earn.
I don’t think this is a bad film, as there are performances worth seeing, and I enjoyed certain stretches, especially when the visuals and score align and the mood briefly locks into place, but those moments are scattered, where the sense of restraint is in all the wrong places.
The actors are capable of more, the setting promises more, the story hints at more - and yet it never quite descends into the moral messiness that would make it uncomfortable in a meaningful way - I like bold adaptations, and I like when filmmakers take risks with time and place, and this one had the foundation.
It just feels like it stopped short of fully committing, and in the end, I found myself admiring pieces rather than the whole - that’s not nothing, but it’s not enough.