Writer-director Andrew Semans’s Resurrection has Rebecca Hall as Margaret leading a successful and balanced life, but this carefully crafted homeostasis is disturbed when she sees an unwelcome presence from her past. 

We watch as Margaret brushes her desk clean, glaring down at the intruding spec of dust, as if warning it to never impede on her perfection again. Everything around her is sharp edges and straight lines with drab colours in her office, in her clothes, even in her tidy home. Hall brilliantly embodies the type of put together woman that other people strive to be, who appears flawless on the outside, who certainly doesn’t live the kind of life that allows for her daughter Abbie (Grace Kaufman) to find a tooth in her wallet. 

This film is patient. The sense of dread slowly brews between Margaret and David (Tim Roth) with the score a mounting heart rate, in a way reminiscent of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. These cracks in her exterior deepen even as she desperately tries to glue herself back together, though they only run deeper. Hall portrays all of these heavy emotions through the quirk of a brow or the slight widening of her eyes in such a masterful way. Hall’s command of the role culminate in a harrowing monologue where the camera holds on her face for its entirety as the background darkens. By its end, surrounded in darkness, all that remains is Hall’s haunted stare and it is absolutely bone-chilling. 

Little by little, Hall peels off a layer of Margaret’s skin with each scene, only to be reborn anew in the end. Semans’ Resurrection captures a performance by Hall that is so raw, it will tear you apart from the inside out and all you can do is sit back in awe.

RATING: 4/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Angela Wong Carbone

DIRECTOR: Andrew Semans

WRITER: Andrew Semans

SYNOPSIS: Margaret must confront the monster she’s evaded for two decades who has come to conclude their unfinished business.

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