Resurrection is a film that was made about two decades too late. This kind of deeply disturbing, undeniably bizarre psychological thriller seems to be more at home with those low-budget blockbusters that centered on ordinary people having their fragile lives shaken by the presence of some vaguely psychopathic individual, who gradually encroaches into their lives until this is nothing left but despair and violence. However, this doesn’t mean that we aren’t entirely enraptured with the story, with the second directorial outing of independent filmmaker Andrew Semans being another addition to what appears to be quite a promising career in genre storytelling, granted he is able to work out all the proverbial kinks that prevents Resurrection from being a much better film. The film is adrift in a sea of bizarre directorial choices and a deranged story that doesn’t always follow through on its overly audacious promises – but on the same token, it is gloriously outlandish and peculiar, and will be appreciated by those who are able to look at this severely serious film with a sense of humour, finding the excessive and often bizarre premise to be indicative of something that has value as a potential cult classic. Far from the suspenseful masterpieces made by Alfred Hitchcock and his creative progeny, but rather a fascinating character study that goes beautifully off-the-rails, eventually becoming something quite polarizing and unconventional, and whether we see this as entirely purposeful or just a side-effect of a film that doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be, its difficult to not find some value embedded somewhere in this strange but absorbing film.

It’s not always the most ideal situation to look at a film through the perspective of ones that came before it, because comparison is often an unnecessary hindrance in any kind of criticism, especially when we are trying to emphasize a singular work. However, we simply can’t avoid contrasting this film with other similarly-themed works, especially since it seems to be heavily inspired by the maniacal psychological thrillers that were consumed en masse only a few decades ago, before going out of favour with audiences, who seemed to drift towards more realistic, less formulaic stories when it comes to the concept of obsession and desire. The main issue here is that Resurrection has a strong story, but it feels like it loses sight of what it wanted to say with it, exchanging a genuinely suspenseful narrative for something more sinister, which would have worked had the director known if he wanted to make a psychological thriller, or a horror film that skirts around the supernatural – a seasoned filmmaker may have been able to incorporate elements of both, but Semans is slightly too much of a novice to do it successfully, which results in a film that is effective, just not in the ways that it may have been with a more precise and direct vision of where it needed to go. Tonally and in terms of structure, the film doesn’t have much of a clear idea of where it was aiming to take these characters, and the lack of explanation for some of its more abstract ideas may seem like an attempt to create a mysterious film, but just becomes slightly too bizarre and illogical to actually make an impact, and we don’t leave the film questioning reality in the way that other films that take a more ambigious approach may inspire in the viewer, which does substantially detract from what Semans clearly thought would be a strong conclusion to a film that would have been more worthwhile with further effort to tie up the loose ends.

One of the more notable trends in contemporary horror and thriller films is the tendency towards taking a relatively simple premise, and infusing it with layers of subtext, which hint at the much deeper and more unsettling meanings that linger under the surface. In most cases, this is normally handled very well, with the interpretations that come from a well-crafted horror normally being well-formed and interesting when they’re discussed. However, there are some instances where it feels like it is just shoehorning themes into places where they should not be, or trying to compress far too many ideas into a single story, which results in an overstuffed and unnecessarily convoluted work. Resurrection is unfortunately caught between the two – it has many clever ideas, especially in how it looks at the theme of motherhood and the anxiety that comes from being a parent (as well as the deep depression that afflicts those who enduring the pain of losing a child), and it is successful at creating an atmosphere of absolute terror in terms of how it looks at domestic violence and the experience of being stalked by someone from the past. However, it is neither elegant nor nearly as effective as it intends to be, especially since the dramatic moments are often quite mishandled – the final scene between the two main characters had the potential to be beyond rivetting, but the final product borders on laughable, and the lack of either a coherent explanation, or actual impact in terms of an ambigious resolution (which it was aiming towards) detracts from the film and makes it a far less effective work, the emotions being overwrought to the point of becoming a self-parody of the kind of dense psychological thrillers that clear inspired this film, but at least had the good sense to be entertaining, rather than genuinely quite miserable.

Mercifully, there is a very solid saving grace at the heart of Resurrection, even if the film itself was not so deeply flawed that it required any real salvation. Rebecca Hall is an absolute star, and while it would be severely underselling her talents to refer to her as a “scream queen” (since she’s been at the heart of many promising horror films in recent years), she has shown a remarkable aptitude at elevating even the most dismal material. It’s not uncommon to find a mediocre film being massively improved purely by Hall’s presence, and this one is a perfect example of it. She plays the part of a successful businesswoman who finds her life gradually unravelling when a spectre from the past returns to haunt her with such incredible intensity, it seems to betray the film around her. Hall is a magnificent talent, and she carries the film almost entirely on her shoulders, proving to be capable of doing much more than is expected of her. Tim Roth, who is an actor that has grown increasingly limited as a result of not pushing himself to choose more interesting roles, is actually surprisingly good as the antagonistic stalker that resurfaces in the main character’s life, a maniacal psychopath that wants to control her and force her into a position of absolute submission. The best scenes of Resurrection occur when Hall and Roth are sparring, which makes their final scene, in which their hateful relationship turns violent, all the more disappointing, since it should have been a strong climax in which two fiercely oppositional characters finally have their tensions come to a head – and it all devolves into a grotesque and unnerving mess that should have been far more well-composed, considering the actors were willing to surrender to the deranged vision of a director who quite simply did not know what to do with them, outside of giving them strong characters, but ones that aren’t taken as far as they could have been with the right material.

It’s not necessarily fair to look at Resurrection as an example of the “so bad it’s good” sub-genre, since it is undeniably a very well-made film with great actors and an intriguing story. For all intents and purposes, this film is relatively successful, since it has a very distinct tone, and its aims of creating an atmosphere of suspense and repulsion are achieved without much difficulty. The fallout occurs when it comes to bringing all of its ideas together – Semans quite simply introduces too many themes into the film than he knew what to do with, and through trying to push them all into a final fight scene (which is already jarring, considering the measured pace of the previous 90 minutes) seems like a cheap attempt to resolve everything, when in reality it only raises more questions. The fraught attempts at introducing overtures of horror into a film that would have been far more effective had it been allowed to stay within the realms of realism don’t work either, and the final product is a film that can be divided into a very strong, tense first act, and a second act that is quite unsettling, but rapidly deteriorates into an unnecessarily convoluted jumble of unrealized ideas and half-baked propositions, held together by a pair of strong performances, who work tediously to cover the glaring flaws underpinning the film. As a whole, Resurrection is a film with some good ideas, but a story that lacks a proper conclusion or a clear direction about what to do with its abundance of themes, leaving us (much like the characters) in a state of complete psychological ambiguity, and not the sort that feels compelling and thought-provoking.