Neil Burger’s thriller aims to capture a mother pushed to protect her family from her past.
In the director Neil Burger’s harrowing yet thin thriller “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” adapted from Karen Dionne’s same-titled novel, a young Helena (Brooklynn Prince) learns how her fairy tale is actually a nightmare. She lives in a woodland cabin with her stern mother, Beth (Caren Pistorius) and her huntsman father, Jacob (Ben Mendelsohn). Jacob often brands Beth’s white skin with Indigenous inspired tattoos and instructs her how to track and hunt.
When a lost wanderer on a four-wheeler comes looking for directions, however, Beth flees with Helena on the vehicle to the police, leading to Jacob’s arrest. Unbeknown to the young Helena, twelve years prior, her supposedly loving father kidnapped Beth to be his bride.
As an adult, Helena (Daisy Ridley) shares a daughter with her husband, Stephen (Garrett Hedlund). But Stephen is clueless to Helena’s past. That changes when Jacob escapes from prison. Helena opts to hunt Jacob before he steals her daughter (Joey Carson).
This is a film superficially about trauma. Rather than mining the emotional and psychological complexities of Helena’s devastation, potentially ripe subjects, Burger hastily pushes ill-fitting thriller tropes onto a character study frame.
While Mendelsohn is often adept at portraying villains, his potential to deliver menace is restricted by a one-note script. Putrid hues of greenish-yellow lighting, meant to signify jumps into the past, also underwhelm the suspense. Still, a game Ridley, along with a brief cameo by a soulful Gil Birmingham, provides the necessary stakes for Burger’s film not to idle in narrative mud.
The Marsh King’s Daughter
Rated R for violence. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
