review we have always lived in the castle

It’s Daddario and Glover who give the best performances though, perhaps due to the fact that they play the most damaged characters. He is both the villain and the everyman we (hopefully) don’t relate to his greediness, but he brings up good points about the unhealthy household. Here he’s allowed to flex more of his dramatic chops, while still utilizing his innate charm. Stan is known mostly for playing Bucky in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he’s charming and generally enjoyable, but it’s still a fairly one-note role. She is especially distrustful of Charles, whom she sees right through from the beginning.

She believes in spellcasting and witchcraft, and constantly buries (valuable) things in hopes of warding off evil.

Her social ineptitude is partly a product of her upbringing, and partly a product of her naturally just being kind of a weirdo. Told primarily from Merricat’s point of view, Farmiga’s reserved presence, hunched shoulders, and awkward mannerisms all lend to an appropriately oddball character. Merricat nailing a book to a tree, part of a spell she hopes will protect her home from outsiders. However, when their deceptive cousin Charles (Sebastian Stan) arrives out of the blue, their odd but manageable lifestyle is threatened. They now live in seclusion with their uncle on the grounds of their massive estate (the so-called “castle” in the title), which towers above a local New England town, much to the disgust of the residents. Such an incident caused widespread suspicion of the girls, but after a lengthy trial neither were found guilty. The only ones who remained unblemished were sisters Mary Katherine (Taissa Farmiga), known more commonly by her nickname “Merricat”, and Constance (Alexandra Daddario).

Six years prior to the start of the film, an arsenic-laced sugar bowl led to the deaths of patriarch John Blackwood, his wife Ellen, and his sister-in-law Dorothy it nearly claimed John’s brother Julian (Crispin Glover) as well, who exists now as a broken, ailing man. The plot concerns the egregiously wealthy Blackwood family, or at least what remains of it. Though it doesn’t quite lean into the horror genre, it nonetheless presents an effectively unsettling atmosphere rife with suspense, paranoia, and a tinge of witchcraft. I suppose with October just around the corner, it’s only right that I continue the trend with a review of another adaptation of her work: director Stacie Passon’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Earlier this week, my colleague Kevin Lever reviewed Netflix’s spooky new series The Haunting of Hill House, based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name.

Review we have always lived in the castle