Haunting Of The Queen Mary (2023) Dir: Gary Shore
- Ridley Coote
- Mar 8
- 2 min read
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This Gary Shore directed supernatural mystery horror is not a film that I would have watched, under normal circumstances, but a friend choosing it at a social gathering was as good an excuse as any for me to see if it was any good. I did have a quick peak at the Letterboxd rating prior to it starting, and was not particularly enthused, but sometimes a film can surprise you, so I decided to be optimistic.
Crikey, this film felt like an odyssey, and not in a good way. There was way too much going on, in every way. There were far too many characters, none of which were interesting, the film jumped back-and-forth from timeline to timeline seemingly at random, and the writing was horribly overcooked and messy. To call this film a confusing and irritating experience would be an understatement.
It did at least look fairly good - I was particularly fond of the costume design, which was varied and memorable - but everything else was terrible. It was hard to care about any of the characters in the film, because, quite frankly, they were all so annoying. The worst thing about the film, however, was its pacing. The film was only two hours, but it felt twice that, and that's being generous. I thought I'd aged several years by the time the credits finally rolled.
The performances of the two leads; Alice Eve and Joel Fry, were extremely average, and very much felt like they were being phoned in. I can't say I blame them, considering the mess that was the screenplay.
Performances from Nell Hudson, Angus Wright, Jim Piddock, and Lenny Rush, also failed to inspire much in the way of positive thought, but at least they were slightly more notable than the many, many, random and pointless characters that featured as well.
Overall, I am so glad that it wasn't my choice to watch this film, because it ended up being one of the worst films I've had to sit through in a long time. This was a film with very few good qualities, and far too much time on its hands. If you cut an hour off of the film's runtime, and focused down the story a bit more, you'd still have an overblown mess, which I think says all you need to know about this film.
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