RESURRECTION (2022)

Resurrection (2022)
Directed by: Andrew Semans
Written by: Andrew Semans
Starring: Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth

RESURRECTION (2022)
Written and Directed by Andrew Semans

Margaret appears to be a successful businesswoman. However, it’s plain to see that her detached attitude is the result of some trauma from her past. At home, her overprotective personality suffocates her teenage daughter, but it seems her intentions are legitimate as we discover Margaret has suppressed a dark and abusive history involving an older man she met in her late teens. His manipulation and physical and mental torture once broke her but she summoned the strength to escape and hasn’t looked back… until now, when she thinks she sees that same man at a conference she’s attending. Paranoid that he’s come to do her and her daughter harm, she’ll stop at nothing to protect her family and drive him away but it seems her old flame has a few tricks up his sleeve to bring her to heel.

RESURRECTION is a tense psychological thriller starring Rebecca Hall as a woman who must confront the tormentor of her past when he catches up with her in the present.

The film opens with Margaret listening to one of her members of staff relay her struggles with her partner and is evidently in an abusive relationship. At this point, we don’t know Margaret’s own history, but we see her encourage the woman to stand up against her partner and take no guff from him. Margaret is a focused individual, running a tight ship where everything runs like clockwork and approaches her life in a very ordered, mechanical way. However, her lifestyle doesn’t afford a proper relationship as she calls up a married member of staff she’s having an affair with whenever she fancies some intimacy. Whilst she seems interested in him, it quickly becomes clear she cannot trust anyone to enter the circle into which her and her daughter exist, and later even uses him purely as a distraction or a way to release her pent up tension when old flame David re-enters her life.

When we first meet David, we feel like it may be a case of mistaken identity, such is the way that Tim Roth plays the middle aged man. However, Roth masterfully plays the duality of the character with the ability to effortlessly transform from a good-natured bloke into the devil incarnate. As the mask slips into that of a menacing grin, we realise Margaret’s fears have come to fruition. With tales of how David used to mentally and physically torture Margaret in the form of ‘kindnesses’ – humiliating and strenuous acts that would get her into his good books – Margaret is sucked back into the life she so desperately tried to escape.

Rebecca Hall is outstanding in this demanding role as we see her character tormented in every way possible. She’s built up this life for herself with her daughter and seems pretty strong-headed, but underneath it all she’s that frightened girl whose always looking over her shoulder. Seeing her crumble, following the emergence of David, is tragic to witness, but her warrior spirit, as she battles to protect what she currently has, remains. Hall beautifully balances the two aspects of someone who’ll do whatever it takes to protect her family to that of someone still haunted by the terror, threats and abuse that she never truly escaped. Forced to relive the past, she has to confront her fears, overcome her emotions, and finish it once and for all.

As mentioned, Tim Roth is terrifying in the role of David. He manipulates Margaret with pleasantries, like a mental abuser would do, all the while issuing threats and gaslighting his victim into thinking that she’s the person whose committed a wrongdoing and she must atone by performing a ‘kindness’, whether that be walking barefoot to work, or maintaining a stress position over a period of hours in a public place. Dangling over her head like a carrot is a twisted notion about the baby they had together when they were young. I won’t say anymore but this becomes the driving force behind Margaret’s dealings with David, and the tie that keeps her shackled to him.

RESURRECTION‘s shocking ending has divided viewers, but is one that I think is a brilliant, if surreal, culmination reflecting the suffering and psychological abuse by a loved one. Before this scene, we see Margaret drowning in the ocean of the city as she’s being dragged under by David with no-one around to help. The only person who can save her is herself, but is she strong enough to fight his iron grip?

Chilling and unnerving, RESURRECTION is a deep and dark portrayal of the long-lasting effects of psychological trauma.

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