Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
A young woman quits her teaching job to become a private tutor and governess for two wealthy young kids, but soon starts to suspect there’s more to their house than meets the eye.
The Turning is a loose adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw that squanders its source material. The plot meanders without building meaningful dread or coherent mythology, and the film's central mystery never resolves into anything satisfying. The acting, particularly from Mackenzie Davis and Finn Wolfhard, is a relative bright spot, with both performers doing their best with thin material. Cinematography is competent and occasionally atmospheric, using the gothic manor setting to reasonable effect. Novelty is low — while the source novel is classic, this adaptation brings little new perspective or distinctive vision to the familiar haunted-house-governess premise. The ending is the film's most glaring failure: it abruptly cuts off in a deeply unsatisfying way that reads less as ambiguity and more as an unfinished film, leaving audiences justifiably frustrated and feeling cheated of any resolution.