In many ways, Resurrection feels like a Lifetime movie reworked and helmed by Brandon Cronenberg or Alex Garland. This is an immense compliment, as the film successfully melds longstanding female trauma, abuse, and repression with modern horror and, should you rely on our protagonist's viewpoint, supernatural elements. Maggie, our protagonist, is seemingly reliable and well put together at first: she is a high-ranking employee at a Bio-Tech company and her well-balanced daughter will be attending college in the fall. On her daily jogs, however, she appears to be running from something and in her own sexual exploits with a married colleague, she is detached. While it all seems perfect (enough), we can tell there is something in the back of Maggie's mind attempting to protect or distance her. When she spots David, a man she fled 22 years ago, at conference her own defense mechanisms and maternal instincts begin to compromise the perfect world she has constructed.
We as the audience follow Maggie exclusively through her own point of view, which may be incredibly unreliable. Events leading up to David's resurgence in her life, such as her daughter finding a random tooth in her wallet, suggest maybe he has quietly been stalking Maggie. Or perhaps her own mind has awakened the past trauma his grooming had caused her. In bed with her colleague at the start of the film, Maggie mentioned she had begun drawing again...something she had not done for 22 years. Could this have awakened the repressed trauma? Resurrection seldom answers too much and the one time it does, a stunning tightly-framed monologue delivered by Rebecca Hall for minutes-on-end, you may not believe the backstory (and if Rebecca Hall wasn't the brilliant Rebecca Hall, laughter may have been the logical response).
The wonderful (or for some, perhaps frustrating) thing about Resurrection, is that there are multiple ways to read the film. Is David merely a representation of repressed trauma bubbling to the surface; has he really tracked down his victim to gain control over her life again; or has he tracked down his victim to reconnect her with what he's been carrying within him for the past 22 years? I have my own opinions, but each view is valid within the dysfunctional world which the audience is immersed. Going into the film blind, I personally loved it (more in hindsight, to be fair) and the way Rebecca Hall anchors the story is so brilliant. I can count on my hand how many actresses could pull of what she managed to do--all the Lifetime-skewed elements she packages and delivers as high-brow drama and horror. Couple a Rebecca Hall-led repression-horror film with brutalist, modern architecture scenery and a delicious Jim Williams horror score (the horror score master, in my opinion, after his work on Raw, Titane, and Possessor) and I am completely, utterly sold.
What is your ultimate 10/10 film? I ask, because Resurrection is that film among the independent horror/supernatural/drama/thriller genre (sorry Ari Aster, sorry Alex Garland).
Rating: 9.5/10