If a film could thrive on atmosphere alone, She Will would be one of the finer psychological thrillers of the year. Visually and sonically, the elements for a compelling cinematic experience are there. Crisp cinematography imbues this film that hinges on dreams with both ethereality and starkness. Ornate, classical interior spaces are juxtaposed by majestic natural landscapes. We’re treated to winding train cars, mist-shrouded vistas, vintage mansions, creepy forests, animate mudflows, elegant levitations and vivid visions of witch burnings. And yet, a crucial ingredient is missing.
In her debut film, writer-director Charlotte Colbert instills a looming sense of dread and then transforms it into darkly exuberant liberation, a nifty feat and an experience made that much moodier by Clint Mansell’s haunting score. Boasting an impressive veteran cast led by Alice Krige and featuring Malcolm McDowell, the performances are striking as well. And yet Colbert and co-writer Kitty Percy’s screenplay, which spends precious little time on any meaningful character development, falters badly in its third act, ultimately sapping She Will of its promising aspects and hopelessly blunting its impact.
The film opens aboard a train, with aging British film star Veronica Ghent (Krige) traveling to a remote Scottish retreat to convalesce following a double mastectomy. Alongside her is a caregiver, Desi (Kota Eberhardt), with whom Veronica is needlessly prickly—as she tells Desi, the former actress only needs her for help with bandages and the occasional bath. When the pair finally reach the sprawling, forest-enrobed estate, Veronica bristles when she finds out there are other guests at this retreat, but her hopes to go back the way she came are thwarted by harsh weather. However, she quickly becomes attuned to her surroundings, as she has dark visions of the fiery deaths of women accused of witchcraft who were once burned there, and the dreams she has in the fancy cabin that she shares with Desi seem to intersect with reality.
Fueled by her night visions and affinity with her surroundings, Veronica soon turns her focus toward revenge, and it’s here that She Will begins to stumble. A film legend named Eric Hathbourne (McDowell) pops up on TV screens and newspaper headlines early in the film, an actor who, as an adult, starred with a 13-year-old Veronica many decades prior in a classic film titled Navajo Frontier. It quickly becomes apparent that that film’s title is one of the less problematic aspects of their professional and personal relationship. (To drive this point home, we see numerous archival photos of a young A Clockwork Orange-era McDowell, looking as lasciviously menacing as ever.) Hathbourne has been selected for knighthood and a remake of his and Veronica’s most notable film has him favorably splashed across media, while tabloids sling mud at Veronica and post unflattering photos of the aging actress. Soon, Veronica is levitating in her bed nightly. She’s also astral projecting herself into the forest, where Desi runs into peril after a night of drinking with a sexually aggressive local (Jack Greenlees), and as far away as TV studio where Hathbourne is being interviewed live.
Veronica enacting eldritch vengeance could be satisfying if the characters in this film had been effectively developed, or if the film’s resolution didn’t feel so contrived. She Will coasts along on often mesmerizing atmospherics, but it’s difficult to maintain this level of dark ethereality when the film gives itself over to heavy-handed plot devices and well-worn tropes—there’s even a scene with Hathbourne sitting alone-ish at bar in his mansion that feels pulled directly from The Shining.
The film hints at Hathbourne struggling with the immorality of his past, but we spend so little time with him—this is Veronica’s story after all—and that this avenue is woefully undeveloped. And we know virtually nothing about Veronica prior to her arrival on the accursed grounds other than that she was a movie star and is now getting old. How have Hathbourne’s actions affected her? We don’t actually know. Does the liberation that Veronica feels by becoming so attuned to her surroundings in the Scottish forest need to lead to revenge, when a much more compelling aspect of her metaphysical actualization is a shot of her discarded breast prosthetics lying in the trash? There’s an underdeveloped maternal instinct that awakens in her with regards to Desi, who shares at one point that she lost her mother at a young age. But, again, this interesting thread goes largely unexplored. Unfortunately, a dismal third act undoes much of the effectiveness of what came before, making She Will an atmospherically stunning misfire.
Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight
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