The Spiritualist Review
The Spiritualist is a 2018 feature film written and directed by Carl Medland. The review screener of this film was sent courtesy of Midnight Releasing.
A slow pace with characters that you will more than likely fail to connect with, The Spiritualist fails to get off the ground and things sadly change little from there.
If there is one thing that keeps this film from reaching any kind of highs it is the overall pace. Moving at a snail’s crawl, there are scenes that should last for a few minutes that go on for double or triple that. This could be forgiven if any of the characters or dialogue had any pull to them, but there is just nothing that one can really gravitate toward here.
This is a film that sits boldly in some nice unbroken takes but it feels more like padding rather than a stylistic choice. For instance, a scene before the titular spiritualist arrives when everyone is sitting in the parlor lounge looks good from a visual perspective but even the most ardent proponent of the long take would agree that something needed to have a cut.
Not to leverage an insult but perhaps had the film stuck to doing solid long takes or more frequent cuts it would have helped a lot more but unfortunately it lands in an awkward place not pleasing either side of the coin.
The story itself feels very basic, with all the twists and turns trying to happen in the last act. At this point though you may be simply ready for everything to just be over with, so any kind of subverted expectations have little impact.
Many of the characters that become key figures don’t really show up until after the 40-minute mark of the piece, and most of them are only there to fill in a kill count as well.
Had this been a shorter film or one with a few more interesting story threads or characters to it, things may have been different. However, The Spiritualist is just a poor stand in for much better films in the same genre. Something like The Conjuring or Insidious will give you much more mileage for your time.
The Spiritualist was sent courtesy of Midnight Releasing.
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