Nocturne (2020)

Directed by: Zu Quirke | 90 minutes | horror | Actors: Sydney Sweeney, Jacques Colimon, Ji Eun Hwang, Madison Iseman, Asia Jackson, Brandon Keener, Bryce McKinney, John Rothman, John Rothman, Stephon Fuller, AJ Tannen, Rodney To, Julie Benz, JoNell Kennedy, Phillip Wampler

‘Nocturne’ opens with an eye-catching scene in which we see a young musician practicing diligently in her room. Meanwhile, the camera zooms out very slowly to draw the viewer’s attention to some strange and cryptic symbols on the wall. Finally, the musician leaves her instrument for what it is, walks to the balcony and plunges down to certain death.

Not long after this tragic event, Juliet, a piano player studying at the same music school, finds the dead girl’s diary. It is full of strange, ominous and prophetic drawings. Juliet becomes captivated by the illustrations and increasingly takes risks and decisions in her professional and personal life that don’t really fit her character. In the end, she even seems to step out of the musical shadow of her more popular and talented sister Vivian. But what price does she ultimately have to pay for this?

In terms of story, ‘Nocturne’ harbors a decent dose of suspense, drama and horror potential. Yet that promise is only sporadically fulfilled. The film is at its best when the surreal elements are given free rein, casting their ominous shadows both visually and aurally. Do the illustrations and Juliet’s visions foreshadow a brutal and violent end of life or will her quest for musical fame end in a success story? Unfortunately, these moments are just a little too sparse and much of the film gets bogged down in a flat portrait of life at a demanding music school. Beautiful and oppressive scenes are too often interspersed with long, excruciatingly slow stretches that fail to grab the viewer by the throat.

It also doesn’t help that Sydney Sweeney neglects to make Juliet a complex or engaging character that the viewer cares about deeply. Juliet is mostly directed and steered by the events around her, but never really becomes interesting herself. This musically tinted film also struggles to find its own coherent tone. ‘Nocturne’ is clearly inspired by ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Suspiria’, but not sure which of these two (completely different) gems it wants to resemble more. In addition, the film suffers from a problem that many works from the ‘Welcome to the Blumhouse’ film series have to contend with: ‘Nocturne’ often feels like a short film or standalone episode of a series that has been forcibly stretched to a running time of one and a half hour.

Although ‘Nocturne’ has a few moments when atmosphere, sound and visual craftsmanship merge into sublime cinema, the print as a whole is too flat, uninspired and predictable to really impress fans of the better tragedy and horror