The Marsh King's Daughter (2023) I'm not necessarily in favor of turning every novel into a 10 episode streaming mini-series, as opposed to a single, self-contained feature film.
But this might have been the best way to go to present a filmed adaptation of Karen Dionne's 2017 book.
Make note of the publication year.....over six years ago. Anybody remember the book? Anybody remember reading the book? Bueller? Bueller?
It should've hit the theaters in 2018, but cruel fate let it languish in development hell.....and then came COVID......
So here at long last, we have a semi-competent film which efficiently (if nothing else) crams the book's story, characters and events into 110 minutes.......sometimes quickly, sometimes not.
No major liberties are taken with the book's basic structure, but its deep dive into physical abuse, and psychological trauma end up simplified and condensed for quick easy digestion. Author Dionne clearly had more on her mind than mere thrills 'n chills......making her story seem like a blending of "Deliverance" and "Where The Crawdads Sing".
But Lionsgate shaved off the subtext and character development, keeping only the immediate violent whim-whams........you know, the stuff that looks good on the trailer. The company also shaved off any money to promote the film, with not a single ad in sight. The corporate lizards simply dumped it into theaters, in the remote hope that maybe a few people would recall the book.
I did. But not the only other people who attended my showing, a young millennial couple who decided to take a chance on the film without knowing a thing about it.
Basically, the film presents a swift, slimmed down synopsis of the book, minus any of the depth of characterization that Dionne brought to the novel.
Young married mom Helena (Daisy Ridley) was birthed by an abducted, raped teen (Caren Pistorius) held prisoner for years in remote Michigan marshlands by evil loon Jacob (Ben Mendelsohn). Years after mother and daughter escaped, the imprisoned Jacob breaks free after killing several prison guards.
Helena's forced to reveal her terrible backstory to her stunned husband. (Garret Hedlund), rocking her marriage. Trained by her father to survive and thrive in the wild, she knows she's the only one who can hunt him down before he gets around to enslaving both her and her own toddler daughter.
Then it's off to the swamps and woods for the extended brutal duel between the devilish dad and his grown-up little girl determined to end him.......(which will make the DVD a wonderfully perverse Father's Day gift....heh, heh, heh...)
At least it's well cast. Ridley really brings the nervous angst and long suppressed fear and rage. And Mendelsohn deftly underplays the wilderness psycho, making him all the more scary. Where the film badly falls down is in its perfunctory, abbreviated treatment of Helena's mother, seen only briefly in flashbacks. Mostly gone from the film is the book's tragic haunted portrait of the mom as a young girl, forever broken and emotionally destroyed by years of captivity and horrific abuse.
What's left here.....a passable, time-waster of a thriller, but only if you wait for it for settle in to Netflix or some other streaming service that you already subscribe to. Which is where this movie should've parked itself to begin with......... 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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