Few actresses working today are as intensely unpredictable as Rebecca Hall, and she bolsters that reputation with Resurrection, a film that hinges on the increasingly unstable—and then outright unhinged—state of mind of Margaret, a single mother whose world is thrown for a loop due to the reappearance of a figure from her past. With a surplus of passion, anxiety and instability, Hall crafts a jaw-dropping portrait of the screwy psychological ramifications of trauma, and one that’s all the more beguiling for being so hard to pin down. Figuring out what’s going on in this off-kilter thriller is part of its appeal, and thus the source of its real power is the inscrutability of its leading lady, whose plummet off the deep end is at once easy to identify and difficult to decipher.
Written and directed by Andrew Semans, Resurrection—which debuts in theaters on July 29 and on VOD August 5, following its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—commences with Margaret speaking with a colleague named Gwyn (Angela Wong Carbone) who’s struggling with a boyfriend who cracks jokes at her expense and then makes her feel bad for objecting to her humiliation. To Margaret, this is a clear case of toxic behavior, since “a sadist never understands why others aren’t enjoying his sadism as much as he is.” Her advice is that Gwyn find someone kinder and more respectful. Afterward, Margaret gathers her belongings, wipes a stray hair off her desk, and goes for a run along a city river, her big arm movements and rhythmic breathing exuding the rigorous sense of purpose and forceful concentration that defines her, whether she’s walking through her office corridors or calling her married boyfriend Peter (Michael Esper) to come over for late-night sex.
As further evoked by Jim Williams’ score of severe strings, Margaret is a sharp, self-possessed woman, and that extends to her love for daughter Abbie (Grace Kaufman), who bristles at her mother’s clinginess and, more fundamentally, at the nervous agitation that seems to be simmering just beneath Margaret’s poised exterior. In an initial sign of the mounting disquiet to come, Abbie pretends to pull a giant tooth out of her mouth and then reveals that it’s not actually hers; she found it in her wallet’s change pouch. This is decidedly perplexing, as is Abbie’s nonchalant reaction to it, and the sight of the incisor on the immaculate, all-white kitchen counter deeply rattles Margaret—perhaps because it’s so bizarre as to disrupt the pristine order of things, or perhaps because it reminds her of a prior incident she’d just as soon keep buried and forgotten.
Resurrection affords no overt explanation for that mysterious fang, but other ruptures in Margaret’s day-to-day shortly materialize—most notably a bike accident that leaves Abbie with a Frankensteinian sutured gash running down her left thigh. This only compels Margaret to grasp tighter to her daughter, much to the girl’s dismay, and though Margaret is subsequently pleased to hear that Gwyn has left her abusive beau, proclaiming, “It’s going to be a happy ending for you,” her own nightmare is just beginning. At a business conference, Margaret spies a man at a distant table and her eyes go wide, her face contorts with panic, she clumsily flees the room and, while almost hyperventilating, takes off sprinting down the street. After scaring her daughter with her sudden appearance at home, and weeping alone in the bathroom, Margaret researches this man on Google—whose name is David Moore (Tim Roth)—before seeing him in public, over and over again.
There are deep ties binding Margaret and David, and they gradually emerge as the latter strives to rekindle their twisted rapport. Semans’ script moves at the patient, ominous pace of a thriller, albeit in a manner that makes one feel like a vital piece of information is missing—a deliberate effect that the filmmaker exploits, and amplifies, as the action progresses. Whereas one expects Margaret’s behavior, and secrets, to come into clearer focus as she strikes up hostile communication with David, the opposite turns out to be true. Revelations about their years-earlier relationship, and the bewildering tragedy that befell them, do come to light, but the bombshells dropped are of a head-shaking variety that answer little and raise numerous additional questions. What one is left with is, at heart, a scenario that makes no logical sense, thereby suggesting that everything we’re witnessing is the byproduct of Margaret’s unreliable point-of-view, and a manifestation of a psyche so wracked with guilt, anger and terror that it’s warped reality itself.
All of which is to say that various things take place and are discussed in Resurrection and yet because they’re inherently inexplicable and impossible, one can’t help but assume that they’re potential figments of Margaret’s delusional consciousness. That, in turn, positions Semans’ film as a portrait of maternal protectiveness, shame, devotion and rage, refracted through a thoroughly cracked lens. The story’s obliqueness does become a bit overbearing; there’s a fine line between being suggestive and willfully obtuse, and the writer/director doesn’t always successfully straddle it. Nonetheless, his stewardship generally casts a portentous spell, with dreamy fades contributing to the impression that this saga is akin to a waking nightmare, and a plethora of close-ups highlighting the straining-to-the-breaking-point condition of his harried protagonist.
While Roth radiates abusive malevolence via cheery smiles and pleasantries, it’s Hall who holds Resurrection together as it tumbles into an abyss of fury, fear, and madness. Ferocious and tremulous, Hall proves a frantic center of attention, her every action imbued with volatility; on more than one occasion, she elicits a jolt from a simple, unanticipated gasp. One can feel, and empathize with, her mounting hysteria even as the plot spirals into seemingly incredible realms that render things borderline-symbolic. Conveying, by film’s conclusion, an almost maniacal degree of desperation and need, Hall embraces the material’s darkness with a feverish gusto that’s electrifying to witness and tough to shake, in the process transforming Margaret’s odyssey into a head-spinner about the internal wounds that never fully heal.
