- Starring
- Hayley McFarland, Molly C. Quinn, Sean Gunn
- Writers
- Mickey Reece, John Selvidge
- Director
- Mickey Reece
- Rating
- n/a
- Running Time
- 93 minutes
- Release Date
- n/a
Overall Score
Rating Summary
This will be one of several reviews from this year’s Tribeca film Festival. To follow our coverage, click here.
Agnes begins as a story centered around a convent with a nun named Agnes (McFarland) who is rumored to be possessed. This causes the church to send in a priest, Father Donaghue (Ben Hall), and his protégé, Benjamin (Jake Horowitz), to assess the situation and deal with it as they see fit. But as they begin to discover the true darkness that lurks within the convent, the focus begins to shift towards Sister Mary (Quinn), a close friend of the possessed Agnes resulting in a de-evolving series of events that spirals off into a very different place by the end credits.
What works so well for Agnes is not only the standout performances from Hall, Quinn, and Gunn as Paul Satchimo but also the world in which their characters exist. It is colored with a vignette-styled hue that forces the nun’s black robes and wooden architecture of the church and quarters to become a more prominent fixture on film. As the characters begin to change, so does the evolution of the physical terrain helping to progress the metaphorical conflict occurring for certain characters. It’s a subtle decision but is one of the major accomplishments of the film by creating a foreboding vision through its use of stylistic visuals to enhance the overall encounters.
However, Agnes is a tale of two films that seemingly coexist but are mostly at odds with one another as they strain to form a cohesive narrative. Much of its first half is darkly funny, visually entertaining, and cleverly builds an unspoken tension of uncertainty, but the film’s necessity to shift away from these strengths and into a different direction come its second half is an odd misstep that might have made sense on paper but was not as versatile when translated onscreen. The film does attempt to bring the plot full circle by the end but stumbles from its deviation resulting in a conclusion that never feels fully earned and or completed. It is the only hindrance in an otherwise serviceable story that offers two halves – one entertaining, the other confusing.
still courtesy of Tribeca
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