This article contains spoilers.
For the most part, Floria Sigismondi‘s The Turning is a well-shot and well-acted adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, equipped with a classic ghost story feel and a level of style that suggests Sigismondi should probably continue making horror films; her next movie, in fact, is set to be an independent horror-thriller, as she revealed to BD’s Boo Crew last week.
But The Turning, alas, most definitely does fall apart, as the film’s “F” CinemaScore suggests. Like another horror film that received the very same score from the audiences polled by the CinemaScore team, The Devil Inside, The Turning unfortunately suffers from a non-ending, derailing the film and sending audiences out of the theater on a sour note.
In a nutshell, The Turning centers on Kate (Mackenzie Davis), a young woman who has taken up residence in the creepy Bly Manor to look after two kids whose parents have recently died in a tragic accident, Miles (Finn Wolfhard) and Flora (Brooklynn Prince). It seems throughout the film that Bly Manor is haunted by various entities, and the film’s initial conclusion sees Kate escaping the mansion alive and with both Miles and Flora in tow. But the film then jumps back in time a wee bit to make a big ole mess of not just that finish, but the entire film.
It’s suggested that Kate has inherited her mother’s mental illness and has imagined most if not all of the film’s events, but it’s incredibly unclear what was real, what wasn’t, and what the movie is ultimately even trying to say. It’s one of those endings that tarnishes the entire journey and makes the whole thing feel like a waste of time, which is a total bummer because everything prior to that point hardly even comes close to “F” territory. Alas, with an ending as disappointing as The Turning‘s, it’s no surprise that audiences are less than thrilled.
For more on that, read Meagan’s review of the film.
Speaking with Collider this week, director Floria Sigismondi explains the thought process behind the non-ending that has resulted in such poor reviews for The Turning.
“Yeah, it’s a very ambiguous [movie] – it [comes down to] finding the essence of the scene, the feeling… I wanted people to experience the movie differently than they would experience another movie,” Sigismondi told the site. “Where you experience it more on an internal [level]. ‘What did I just experience?’ rather than ‘Oh, you can articulate the story in one sentence’.”
She elaborates, “I didn’t want to spoon-feed the audience. I was hoping that people can take away different things from the movie. To generate dialogue is what excites me. When I go see a film, and I’ve got something to say or a question, or it opens up something new in me…that’s what excites me about cinema, rather than being spoon-fed with a nice little bow at the end.”
So what does the ending mean, you ask? Sigismondi explains, “It’s the thematic idea of being locked in with this trauma that you’re dealing with… But I don’t want to say too much about it. The ending [of The Turning] is different than the book– because I wanted [the film] to be different and surprising. I wanted to redeem Kate and tell a more emotional story.”
The filmmaker also teases that “there’s another version of an ending” that we’ll likely be seeing on home video, which hopefully will bring a bit more clarity to the film’s story.
