Baby crying again? Throw it out the window already!
I joke, folks, though The Yellow Wallpaper does not. This psychological horror reminds us that disturbing comes in different packages.
Take Jane and John. This married couple will spend the summer with their newborn at a lovely estate. Nice, right?
Wrong. Oh so wrong. Jane’s face screams it. Hubby (who is also her doctor) has arranged this trip to fix whatever Jane is living with, and wow does the prescription have side effects.
You’ll stay in this room Jane, I picked it out for you. It gives you a bad feeling? Nonsense. And stop with your writing, you must rest. Enjoy the grounds, now, but don’t stay outside for too long. Oh, and I might be gone a couple days; someone has to pay the bills around here. See ya!
This mix of patriarchal- and medical-malpractice is maddening. And as you’d guess, Jane’s condition worsens in its midst. Whether it’s anxiety or postpartum depression, boredom or schizophrenia, we can’t tell. What we do see—heck, what most of the movie is—is long, quiet scenes of Jane staring at things. Exploring dark parts of the estate, here; staring at that terrible yellow wallpaper, there. Wait—did you hear that?
Brief and few moments of narration do not change the feeling of this movie; it is slow, naturalistic. Kudos go to essentially all of the moviemakers here. You can see where the story is headed and it makes you wanna scream.
Fair warning, though, I was taken out of it more than once. Jane’s descent feels about 20% longer than it needs to be; its different scenes aren’t meaningfully different. And while Jane’s character is a difficult one to portray, filled with inner dialogue and turmoil that can only be hinted at on the surface, I found the portrayal to lack a certain depth. Little things like eyes darting (which can happen when actors try too hard to avoid the camera) and Jane’s accent (markedly different than those of her fellow characters, and curiously modern-sounding at times) are what I’m thinking of here.
With a meaningful, interesting premise and lovely techniques to explore it, The Yellow Wallpaper captured my attention for a while. More often than not, however, I had the feeling that this movie was almost there. That tempered my experience a fair bit.