Review of The Turning (2020) by Rebecca31 — 28 Jan 2020

Have any of you ever been to an average amusement park with a less than average haunted house/ghost train where half the machines don't work and the ones that do are so far from scary you just want the whole experience to end as soon as possible? Yeah, that's what it's like to watch The Turning.

Kate (Mackenzie Davis) takes a new job in a totally creepy mansion as a live in governess for two orphans, Flora (Brooklyn Prince) and Miles (Finn Wolfhard). She soon discovers that the house and the children are harboring some dark, disturbing secrets. And in proper horror movie fashion it takes all the clichés you've seen before and stuffs them into an hour and a half desperately hoping something will scare you. Not only does it fail at it's one job it also has nothing else going for it. There's no atmosphere, it introduces various themes bordering on mystery or psychological thriller but the result is a bland boring mess. It's all over the place with the horror movie tropes you've seen done before only better. As the story progresses it only gets worse and in the last act you could be forgiven for thinking you fell asleep only to wake up towards the end and ask yourself "what just happened?" I was awake the whole time and I felt like this, I was still asking myself that question when it finally ended. Only I don't care enough to look into to the fact that it feels like a chunk of this film is missing, I honestly don't care.

The casting was about the only thing The Turning got right. Davis, Prince and Wolfhard are better actors than The Turning would have you believe. So it's painful to see them in such a badly written, generic horror. Not recommended, trust me you'll regret wasting time on this one. But if you don't want to take my word for it I can assure you the other four people in the cinema didn't seem too impressed with The Turning either.