All at once, life for the otherwise successful Margaret (Rebecca Hall, The Night House) is unstable. She’s bedding a married co-worker. With her daughter set to leave for college, Margaret faces an empty nest. Worst of all, her past suddenly and literally has come back to haunt her.
It comes in the form of David (Tim Roth, The Hateful Eight), a former flame from more than 20 years prior. Margaret sees him pop up wherever she goes: work conference, department store, the park. Why he’s there and what he wants, I leave for viewers of Resurrection to discover on their own. That said, it’s clear their relationship was abusive and toxic, and his controlling nature — okay, brainwashing — picks right back up, essentially holding Margaret’s sanity hostage.
Hall does stress — and distress — very well. Over the course of the film, what begins as suspicion morphs into suffocation. That festers into such all-consuming panic, you’re watching each frame for signs of fracture for Margaret to crack. I don’t know why writer/director Andrew Semans (Nancy, Please) took a full decade before making this sophomore feature, but if it were a case of securing just the right actress, his wait was worth it. Her performance works hand in hand with Semans’ cold, clinical, antiseptic view of Albany, New York, purposefully disallowing viewers to feel comfortable at any point.
On the downside, he keeps Resurrection’s secrets tucked away for too long, sure to frustrate many. As a whole, the movie would be all the more potent shorn of half the second act. Then again, Resurrection was never intended for mainstream consumption, best evidenced by the whammy of a climax, as oblique as it is flabbergasting — an ending, perhaps, only a mother could love. —Rod Lott
