Delayed Reaction: Nocturne

Premise: A student at a classical music academy finds the music book of a student who recently committed suicide which helps her to succeed in ways she never has before.

 

This movie is basically Black Swan with an easy out. Both movies are about young women who are pathologically committed to their craft and how that slowly unravels them. Black Swan expertly depicts this as a descent into madness. There's something supernatural about the movie but it's not explicit. Nocturne uses an easier horror movie out by tying it all to this book that Sydney Sweeney finds. She's driven, but the book is really to blame. To be fair, the filmmakers and actors in this movie aren't at a Black Swan level (nor is the budget), so they do the best they can. I'm a big Sydney Sweeney fan apparently. I think she's been great in really eclectic mix of shows (Everything Sucks, The Handmaid's Tale, Sharp Object, Euphoria), but she is overwhelmed by this material. The movie makes her really passive. The things from the book just happen. She doesn't actually do that much. That's sort of the point, but it's tough to make passivity look interesting.

 

The scoring/music does a lot of heavy lifting in this. The movie occasionally and abruptly switched to this loud music that reminded me of people scream-moaning. It's effective at making me uncomfortable, but it often was more than what was actually happening on screen needed. I would've loved to see the movie that needed that music.

 

There's something a little funny about how much everyone in the movie notes the pointlessness of all this. They talk about how no one really listens to classical music anymore. No matter how well Sweeney plays, it doesn't matter, because her Julliard tryout already came and went. Her new instructor explains that if she was truly gifted, she wouldn't need a school to teach her at all. I appreciate how candid the movie is. Maybe it's a commentary on how obsession doesn't have to make sense, but for me, it undercut the stakes of the movie a bit too much. It doesn't help that Sweeney's suicide felt inevitable, since she wasn't doing much of anything to stop it.

 

Side thought: The director’s name is Zu Quirke. That's an awesome name. I hope they make more movies, just so I can see it in more credits.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend