Jessica Rothe delivers (as always) in BT Meza’s gaslighting horror, which draws real tension from its central setup, then somewhat deflates once its central mystery is solved.
★★★
A woodland road at night. A woman (modern genre icon Jessica Rothe, for it is she) lies by a car crash. She staggers to her feet, is hit by another car, and… wakes up injured and disoriented in a house that doesn’t feel like hers, confronted by a man who insists he’s her husband and a child who backs him up. But this isn’t her family! Or is it?
Yes, it’s another gaslighting horror. Anyone who’s ever watched a movie before will be sure right from the jump that that man (Joseph Cross) is not her husband, but in that case the question is: who is the little girl (played by Julianna Layne), and why is she backing him up so vehemently? And why, when Rothe looks in the mirror, does she not see the face she remembers, but the face in the house’s family photos?
The opening stretch works because it embraces the mystery. The woman (Ellie Carter? Or is she?) listens, questions, tests what she’s told, then quietly investigates. The tension builds through steady pressure, through the insistence that her own instincts are unreliable… and then she finds something in the woods.
Jessica Rothe carries this film on her back, elevating what would be a derivative chamber-piece B-movie into something fun. She shows her character’s understanding shift in real time, moving from confusion into suspicion and then into something closer to wary participation. It’s a coiled-energy performance built out of small reactions and hesitations, drawing you in and keeping you by her side.
Things can’t remain mysterious forever, and a sci-fi revelation arrives halfway through and changes the terms of the story. The idea works well enough, but the shift pushes the film from mystery into action thriller, and as the truth is are laid out tension drains away. What had been a tense, tight dynamic becomes more schematic, and the enjoyable paranoia is replaced by a bunch of running around.
There are still effective moments after the turn, but they don’t land with the same weight, and what was ominous becomes a bit silly.
Even so, Affection does a decent amount with limited means. It builds a strong first half from a simple situation and a committed lead performance, and although it doesn’t sustain that level throughout, it never falls apart. Anyone who’s seen Rothe in Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U will be more than happy to see her taking on this gaslighting schmuck, whatever it is he’s up to, but also keen to see her getting better scripts than this one, which plays like an average episode of The Outer Limits.
If in the final analysis Affection winds up as a superior horror mystery it’s because of the creepy intrigue of that opening stretch, and also the basic cheer-ability as Jessica Rothe girlbosses her gaslighter. Good for her.
Affection played at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans and comes to US cinemas on 8 May
Whitlock&Pope 