Anniversary

Directed by Jan Komasa, Anniversary details the degree to which a family is torn apart after the arrival of a mysterious young woman (Phoebe Dynevor’s Liz) into their lives. Filmmaker Komasa, armed with Lori Rosene-Gambino’s screenplay, delivers a progressively insufferable endeavor that does, at the outset, almost feel like a ’90s blank-from-hell thriller, as the emphasis is placed on Dynevor’s mysterious figure and the head-scratching tension between Liz and said family’s matriarch (Diane Lane’s Ellen) – with the picture eventually settling into a deliberate, talky midsection generally devoid of engaging, watchable attributes. It’s clear, as well, that Rosene-Gambino’s growing reliance on eye-rollingly didactic elements only enhances the interminable atmosphere, and there’s little doubt, as well, that Komasa’s inability to elicit solid work out of his talented performers, with this particularly true of Dynevor’s frustratingly robotic performance, accelerates Anniversary‘s descent into complete and total awfulness – with the end result a tone-deaf and horribly misguided trainwreck that feels so much longer than its 112 minutes.

1/2* out of ****