Review of The Beguiled (2017) by Shpostal — 30 Jun 2017

Given good reviews ahead of time, I was expecting a movie that used both atmosphere and the tensions of war to create maybe a suspenseful borderline psychotic thriller and the trailer seemed to indicate that these little private girl's school deep in the Spanish moss covered Virginia backwoods during the Civil War, 1964 to be exact, was a sinister place with hints of madness blossoming into a real fruit cake of a movie.

I was wrong. For a movie called "The Beguiled", there is nothing particularly beguiling about it. Colin Farrell plays a wounded Union soldier taken in by the home to heal from his wounds, and the movie drags along to the half way point with no real action, suspense, and very little moving plot.

Only after that point does it begin to show promise, and despite some great possibilities for a truly frightening movie, it falls flat. We never get past the prissy performance by Nicole Kidman, who shows about as much depth as a kiddie pool.

What is supposed to pass for real sexual frustration and tension barely scratches the surface, and even when Farrell starts getting "creepy", unconvincingly at that, the movie just doesn't connect.

We get a lot of praise for Sofia Coppola, but I don't see the greatness that she supposedly possesses. This is a movie long on expectation, boring in its delivery, and left my wife and I wondering just what the fuss was all about.

It's a dud and that's too bad because in the right director's hands, it could have been special. Instead it's just another remake of a movie that didn't need remaking in the first place.