InThralled
It’s a big change, Emily Arnold widowed after the sudden death of her workaholic husband Robert, her daughter Annalisa carrying both that and the death of her boyfriend Drew in a car accident but moving forward stoically, in the first trimester of her pregnancy and packing up the house as they move together from Atlanta, Georgia to Clear Creek, Arkansas.
The tiny town where childhood sweethearts Emily and Robert grew up, despite leaving everything behind Emily has brought with her nightmares, strange things happening around the quiet house atop the hill where her own mother lived and died, muddy footprints and a pair of Robert’s boots thought given to charity found in the hallway, a shirt in the wash which shouldn’t be there…
Directed by Douglas Bankston from a script co-written with Kate Siegenthaler, InThralled is a tale of family and inheritance, of secrets of the past which continue their hold into the present, Emily (Alanna Hamill Newton) convinced she has moved on from her husband’s death yet confronted by reminders of him while Annalisa (Annie Sullivan) is drawn to a book in a second-hand shop which tells of witchcraft, words and names inexplicably familiar to her.
The characters as clean, white and crisp as the endless rounds of laundry Emily runs and hangs outside the perfectly appointed house she has inherited, a person who has lost her husband and who worked as a therapist yet remains untouched by life, uncomplicated, unblemished, fresh out of the package, her entire personality post-retirement is housework, coffee and relaxation.
A world of neatly pressed clothes, flawless hair and makeup, a home so perfect it seems like a showhouse and people who are empty beyond their functions in the story which crawls forward punctuated by explosions of exposition, InThralled feels more like an advertising campaign than the sinister supernatural thriller it hopes to be, wealthy white people who have repressed their tragedies so completely they have excised any emotion along with the trauma.
Dad’s cousin Marsha Cotton (Lily Workman) the black sheep of the family, now dead thirty years but seen bleeding out in a hospital corridor in flashback, InThralled is drawn out like a soap opera, The X-Files’ Aubrey meets a tepid starched-collar Bible-belt retread of Shirley Conran’s Lace, the attempt at atmosphere of the swirling aerial camera failing to distract from the endemic blandness, any threat or danger smothered under the weight of indifference.
InThralled will be released globally on Tuesday 7th October
