The Turning (2020)

What makes The Turning worth your time is its unnerving, elegant mood: a stately country estate filmed like a beautiful bruise, where every hallway seems to remember something it won’t say out loud. Floria Sigismondi leans into gothic atmosphere and tactile dread rather than cheap shocks, and Mackenzie Davis anchors the film with a performance that feels increasingly raw and intimate as the walls close in. Finn Wolfhard and Brooklynn Prince are terrific, giving the children a disquieting intelligence that keeps you guessing whether they’re victims, accomplices, or simply traumatized kids trying to survive. It’s a slow-burn, style-forward haunted-house thriller that favors ambiguity and lingering images over clean answers—so if you want tidy closure you may bristle, but if you like horror that gets under your skin and stays there, it’s an enticing ride.

The Turning wants to be a classy, slow-burn gothic ghost story about trauma, corrupted innocence, and whether the real monster is supernatural or psychological. The problem is it spends so much time circling its own mysteries that the tension rarely pays off, and the scares are more “moody imagery” than genuinely frightening set pieces. Mackenzie Davis does solid work and the estate atmosphere is suitably eerie, but the storytelling feels muddled and the ending lands like the movie simply stops mid-thought rather than delivering a conclusion. If you need clear answers, a satisfying finale, or consistent horror thrills, this will likely feel like a frustrating waste of time; if you’re okay with ambiguity and vibes over payoff, you might tolerate it.