The Boathouse: Knowingly Generic Thriller, With Nowhere to Go
By Liam Lacey
Rating: C
A psychological thriller with supernatural overtones, The Boathouse is a debut Canadian feature film from actor and director Hannah Cheesman.
It stars Michaela Kurimsky (Firecrackers) as Anne, a grad student in music composition, who takes a summer job as a baby-sitter for two adolescents (Jack Fulton and Taylor Belle) while their literary academic father, Dominic (Alan Van Sprang) finishes his latest book. Dominique’s wife, Natalia (Kelly Martin), a concert pianist, has apparently ran off with another man to Prague, leaving him stranded.
Anne (Michaela Kurimsky) finds her new nanny job at a summer retreat more than a bit strange.
As an unapologetically generic film, The Boathouse has numerous familiar elements. And the filmmakers do nothing to hide that this is a modern update on the gothic story of the vulnerable young woman entering an intimidating household. Predecessors include Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, a film in which a boathouse also figured prominently.
In the middle of the film, there’s an academic dinner party where the guests have a not-terribly-convincing discussion about artistic influence “standing on the shoulders of others” versus outright plagiarism. This theme ties in with a plot point about intellectual theft.
Though another film might treat these inside references with winking irony, The Boathouse plays it straight, with the exception of the silly title of Dominic’s early book, Literary Orgasms, an inference that assures that Anne will end up in Dominic’s bed.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
The two share something beyond shared cottage lust. Natalia was Anne’s thesis advisor in her musical composition studies, and both the dumped husband and the student found her an intimidating presence.
The central problem with The Boathouse is Elizabeth Stewart’s script, which knows where it comes from but isn’t so clear on where to go. Though Michaela Kurimsky has strong screen presence, the character of Anne comes with such a a host of trauma issues (anxiety, amnesia, blackouts, sleep-walking), all apparently derived from a car accident, her point of view becomes unreadably erratic.
We’re in for a lot of flashbacks, repetition, jump cuts and apparent hallucinations, especially of “mysterious music” from the boathouse at night, which pokes in and out of the constant rumbling, grumbling score.
With the muddle of anxious activity - including neighbours with dark warnings and weirdly aggressive behaviour from both Dominic and his disturbed teen-aged son, Leon (Fulton) - it becomes clear that Natalia probably didn’t run off to Prague at all, though the police are remarkably slow in figuring that out.
What’s also transparent is that only one of three characters could plausibly be responsible for what has happened, which results in a resolution both unsurprising and cathartically unsatisfying.
The Boathouse serves as another cautionary tale - not the Gothic one warning young women about putting themselves in peril, but about the artistic risks of embarking on the commercial but tricky thriller genre, a form that offers a narrow window of success and much wider one for failure.
The Boathouse. Directed by Hannah Cheesman. Written by Elizabeth Stewart. Starring: Michaela Kurimsky, Alan Van Sprang, Taylor Belle and Jack Fulton. The Boathouse will be playing at the Carlton in Toronto (Dec. 10-14), for one night only in select Landmark theatres and on VOD/Digital.