It proves quite difficult to discuss the mechanics of The Tutor, an old-fashioned thriller that wants to keep us guessing but ultimately breaches a proverbial contract between a movie and its viewer. In theory, King is following the rules of such a thriller as if crossing items off of a checklist (indeed, it seems quite believable that such a thing could have happened on the set from the evidence here). We are introduced to a character who is ostensibly our protagonist, experience strange and inexplicable events from his perspective for more than an hour, and then are treated to a jarring and bewildering twist that rewrites everything about the movie we were watching to such a degree that the feeling is akin to whiplash.
Discussing the plot of the film, then, requires a significant amount of restraint when it comes to the entire final act of Ryan King’s screenplay. What we know at the outset is the identity and career of our main character, a professional tutor named Ethan (Garrett Hedlund) who helps clients to study for standardized tests. At home, his girlfriend Annie (Victoria Justice) is expecting a child, and at work the drudgery of the usually barren summer season is about to start looking up with the prospect of a new, wealthy and secretive client willing to pay four figures per day in exchange for Ethan staying at their house for a week. He is to assist the only child of the family, a son named Jackson (Noah Schnapp), in studying for the SATs.
Inevitably, of course, nothing here is what it seems, from the reason why Ethan was hired for this job to the identities of Jackson and the other inhabitants of the grandiloquent manor house (a seriously impressive structure, featuring a 50-motorcycle garage and multiple rooms solely for shooting billiards). The clues that something is amiss about the boy are subtle at first, with Ethan simply wondering whether Jackson is on the autism spectrum, but escalate quickly. Jackson and his dead-eyed weirdo of a cousin, Gavin (Jonny Weston), know all about Annie’s pregnancy, as well as the fact that it is occurring before the two have married, and keep speaking in riddles and all around their own intentions with Ethan.
Until a certain point, King and director Jordan Ross tell this story with an appreciable attention paid to the structure of a good mystery. The general forward motion of the film is also energetic and evolves smartly, even when a certain revelation from Ethan’s past comes back around to haunt him. Ethan is mostly a blank slate, a result of a smart decision by Hedlund to play the man as a generally good guy with a lot going for him, and Schnapp is amusingly antagonistic as a rich, entitled kid hiding beneath several layers of privilege and sullenness.
Then we reach that final, damned twist. It certainly reconfigures what we know about this story and these characters, testing our sympathy and sense of perspective as a certain character’s motivations suddenly twist into something repellent and purely nonsensical. The performances and even Ross’s simple filmmaking acumen shift, as well, turning the quiet but propulsive The Tutor toward flashy, empty histrionics.
Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment
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