“In 1922,” the narrator begins, “a man’s pride was a man’s land. And so was his son. My wife, she wanted us to leave all this behind.”
The movie, which arrives on Netflix on October 20, is based on Stephen King’s novella of the same name. In the novella, Nebraska farmer Wilfred becomes enraged when his wife, Arlette, decides to sell her portion of their family farm and advocates moving their family to the city in Omaha. To prevent this, Wilfred manipulates their teenage son, Henry, into helping him commit and cover up Arlette’s murder. However, after they kill Arnette and conceal her body in the backyard well, rats, hauntings, sickness, and a serious spate of bad luck come for both Wilfred and Henry.
I am 200% here for a rural lady-ghost revenge flick. I love the creepiness of the rat imagery, and I love transforming the idea that women “belong in the home,” or control the “domestic sphere” from a sexist trope into a menacing prophecy. And there’s a savage poetry to a woman who was murdered for wanting to escape a place consuming it and tearing it down. The house is mine now, asshole.
However, this is also the sort of movie that could easily turn into a troubling “sympathy for the wife-killer” piece, and I am not here for that. Given the movie’s point-of-view, and what sounds like Wilfred’s voiceover narration, it’ll be difficult to tell this story without making Wilfred into the character that the audience most sympathizes and empathizes with. I’m curious about how the politics of this film will turn out.
What did you think, though?
(Featured image via screengrab)
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