Resurrection Review: Rebecca Hall Grounds Intense Psychological Drama [Sundance]
Rebecca Hall is an accomplished, superb actress who ventured into the world of directing with last year’s Passing. She’s back in front of the camera in Andrew Semans’ Resurrection, a psychological thriller that is unnerving and brim with themes surrounding motherhood, fear, and toxic relationships. While Resurrection veers into the absurd at one point, it’s unhinged, intense, and worth watching for Hall’s performance, as well as the thematic layers that are just waiting to be explored.
Margaret (Hall) has a solid career in biotech and a 17-year-old daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), she adores and is overprotective over. Everything in her life seems to be going well enough — that is, until she spots a figure from her past at a work conference and has a panic attack. That figure turns out to be David Moore (Tim Roth), the man Margaret was in a relationship with when she was just 18-years-old and too young to understand the toxicity it would entail. Abusive can’t even begin to describe David and his reappearance dredges up the past in ways that send Margaret over the edge. Afraid that David will hurt Abbie (and he threatens to do so), Margaret becomes even more overprotective and smothers her daughter, asking her to check in constantly and to not leave the house. All the while, Margaret hatches a plan to finally free herself from David’s influence for good.
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While it’s firmly a psychological drama, Resurrection has supernatural elements that will have the audience questioning what is and isn’t real. This is especially true as Margaret’s unraveling escalates, creeping further into strange territory. Semans handles these aspects and the
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