★ (1 out of 4)
It takes balls to put a new film on the critical chopping block and then call it “The Dreadful.” But they have, so here I go. “The Dreadful” is dreadful to the max, a laborious medieval drama set during the War of the Roses which lasted 32 years from 1455 to 1487. “The Dreadful” lasts longer or seems like it does. I kept staring at the screen and praying “please make it stop.”
This misbegotten mess stars Sophie Turner and Kit Harington, who famously played Stark siblings on “Game of Thrones.” Now they’re having sex with each other in “The Dreadful,” but not as brother and sister, incest forbid. If I’m making this sound titillating, my apologies. The script that horror director Natasha Kermani has carved out of the 1964 Japanese classic “Onibaba” would rival molasses for slowness and turgid stickiness.
The talents involved in ‘The Dreadful’ probably never meant to cobble together one of the worst movies of this young year. But they have achieved it.
Cut down to basics, the setup is this: Turner slips uncomfortably into the role of Anne, a soldier’s wife begging for scraps and advice on how live in harmony with her witch of a mother-in-law, Morwen, played by Oscar-winner Harden as if in the process of inventing the concept of overacting. She damn near blows Turner right off the screen.
Nothing much happens since Anne’s husband, Seamus (Laurence O’Fuarain), has been gone for years warring with those damned Roses, along with Anne’s childhood bestie Jago (Harington). It’s Jago who delivers the sad news that Seamus has been killed in combat, leaving Anne alone except for Morwen who takes the news of her son’s death with grace and calm. I’m lying. Morwen goes bugout nuts, embarking on a serial killing spree that spares no one, especially pious men of the cloth.
It is true that Anne and Jago don’t waste too much time getting it on, but their romance lacks the charge of sexual chemistry, perhaps due to all that time this acting duo spent playing siblings. For whatever reason, those starved for carnality should expect few rations.
That leaves Morwen, of course, though she must compete with a murderous, helmeted knight roaming the countryside for victims. The knight may be an apparition, but whatever he is he is not scary, not for a minute. There’s no doubt that Anne’s avenging mother-in-law could quickly pound him into scrap metal. I keep coming back to Harden because she is the only performer in this cardboard horror pageant that will keep audiences from drifting into a comatose stupor.
Clearly, the genuine talents involved in “The Dreadful” never meant to cobble together one of the worst movies of this very young year. But they have achieved it. As for potential ticket buyers, let me leave you with these words from a classic 14th-century poem by Dante: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”