Up the winding English country lane drives Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson), heading sullenly toward the somber manor beyond the rusty iron gate. The house, Hundreds Hall, is a place of memory for the doctor. His mother had been in service there and he recalls, vividly, the World War I victory fete on the grounds to which the commoners were invited. Then, the manor was a grand place filled with marvelous things. Now, after World War II, Hundreds Hall has decayed. The lordly Ayres family can barely afford the house and can no longer keep up appearances.
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Room), The Little Stranger is an elegantly told ghost story that leaves its apparitions to the imagination. Are the strange doings the result of madness or chance? Has Faraday’s return aroused the restless spirit of Ayres’ daughter who perished in the house? Or is it the psychological ramification of the winds of change that make the floorboards creak and whisper through the voice tubes between the rooms? Faraday drifts into friendship and offers the prospect of marriage to the Ayres’ unhappy surviving daughter, Caroline (Ruth Wilson), but is he only trying to take a piece of the manor that has haunted his imagination since childhood?
With an emotional tone as bleak as its dark color palette, The Little Stranger builds its story (from the novel by Sarah Waters ) with admirable subtlety and transcends the clichés of contemporary horror. It’s almost The Turn of the Screw with electric lights or Brideshead Revisited with a ghost in the hall.
