2025
I read Diane Setterfield’s novel back in 2008 or so, but I don’t remember a single thing about it, so this felt completely new to me. Which is fine! I have a weakness for Gothic stories no matter the era or setting. A crumbling English manor with ivy creeping through shattered windows. Victorian secrets locked in journals and attics. Modern suburbs with something ancient and dark in the basement. It doesn’t matter, they’re all good. The shape of the story stays the same across centuries. Someone isolated. A house that remembers, secrets that won’t stay buried. Blah blah blah. The trappings work on me every time!
Biographer Margaret Lea (Olivia Colman! YAY! We love an Olivia Colman BBC movie! Which is basically like…every BBC movie!) is summoned to the remote estate of dying novelist Vida Winter (Vanessa Redgrave), who, after decades of evasive interviews and elaborate storytelling, is finally ready to tell the truth about her childhood at Angelfield House. Feral twins, mysterious deaths, possible ghosts, family secrets that get darker as the story unfolds.
Angelfield itself is the platonic ideal of a manor house gone to ruin. Empty rooms where wallpaper peels in long curls. Gardens so overgrown they’ve become labyrinths of bramble and wild roses. Vines invading through the front door, flora reclaiming hallways, nature slowly devouring the grand house. The flashbacks of the twins growing up in near-total isolation in this semi-abandoned estate are both eerie and a bit heartbreaking. Two girls who barely speak, moving through rooms like ghosts themselves, inventing their own language because no one bothered to teach them anything else. It’s embarrassing to say that even though I’d read the book, I couldn’t remember where the mystery was going, but the truth finally comes to light, and the explanation feels less compelling than all the creepy atmosphere that came before it.
The film crams a lot of novel into 90 minutes, and it’s pretty obvious. But it’s fine. A gentle British ghost story (despite the murder and incest!) and nothing to get your heart pounding too hard….but when you’ve got a moldering manor full of menace and mystery and that specific Gothic ghostly gloom, what more do you need? A cup of tea and some knitting? I had that too, so despite any flaws, it made for a near-perfect autumn evening.
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Emera says
This looks so beautiful. Must watch. I am now dimly remembering that the novel was also on my to-read list when it came out... but it doesn't seem to have had much of a cultural afterlife (read: I can't remember the last time I saw a copy in a used bookstore).