Rebecca (2020)

REVIEW BY: SIMON AMSTER

The new version of Rebecca is as flat as a pancake. 

No gothic melodrama, no suspense, no sense of impending doom. Essentially everything that made the Hitchcock version of the Du Maurier story a success is painfully lacking. 

To suggest that Armie Hammer is no Laurence Olivier or Lily James no Joan Fontaine, is clearly beyond the obvious, but even Kirstin Scott Thomas who acts everyone else off the screen, seems like she's wandered into the wrong movie. 

Ben Wheatley (not a director anyone could usually accuse of being dull) should have made a fever dream box of delights but it all feels like a Hallmark movie of the week rather than the revisionist Hitchcock melodrama anyone was hoping for. He throws in a few of his signature folk horror motifs and over-saturated slow motion moments, but they seem strangely out of place against the glossy romance that dominates the first third of the film. 

Perhaps most distressing is how characterless Manderley has become. For Hitchcock it was the beating heart of the movie. Virtually a character in itself, much like the Overlook dominates The Shining, but in the hands of Wheatley, it's just another British stately home in the style of Downtown Abbey, as threatening as a friendly puppy. 

Ultimately, it all feels rather pointless and unnecessary, and you just have to wonder if anyone really cared that much about it. This is a film that really needed to be full throttle but it plays like someone forgot to take off the hand brake. #notmyrebecca