The Turning

THE GIST: A young teacher quits her job to become the governess of a young, wealthy, orphan girl. Their relationship seems off to a good start until the girl's brother, impudent, arrogant, and intolerable, is expelled from school and comes back home. The governess soon begins to experience nightmares and weird visions that bring her to believe there's a malign presence in the house.

The Turning is the latest adaptation of Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw." I never read the story, but this adaptation can't possibly render it justice. There's no way it can be so famous and this bad.

The movie didn't receive good reviews, but the glimpses I caught of the trailer seemed promising, so I decided to check it out.

There are some scares -- thought nothing terribly original -- and the actors are all pretty good, especially Mackenzie Davis and Finn Wolfhard, but the movie just abruptly ends.

I remember, when the end titles suddenly appeared on screen, doing a double take and going "WTF! How can it be over??!" Apparently, from reading online, I wasn't the only one puzzled.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If it ended better (and I don't discard the possibility that the source material ends as abruptly as this) I might have been more magnanimous, but given that the movie feels like it's missing a whole part, I really can't.

Grade: 3