When you say 'generic,' do you mean the ghost story?Ībrahamson: Genre. In this case, you have such an interesting mixture of generic elements, but in the service of something very non-generic. Something is pushing me to do it.' From the point of view of the craft of it, I really like for there to be something hard in a project, something that is challenging, which is going to stretch me as a filmmaker. It just felt like I just couldn't let it go. Lenny Abrahamson: I hadn't wanted to do another adaptation straight after Room, but I had read before Room and it just stayed with me. Thrillist: The Little Stranger seems like an extremely challenging book to adapt. Thrillist sat down with Abrahamson to unpack that eerie moment. The final shot of the movie offers as explicit an explanation as it's going to give you: the spectral image of Faraday as a child peering down to where Caroline fell. And finally Caroline (Ruth Wilson) - to whom Faraday proposes marriage before she breaks off their relationship - mysteriously plummets to her death one night in an act that may be suicide. Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), the matriarch, is plagued by occurrences that lead her to believe her dead child is present.

Rod (Will Poulter) - a former RAF pilot suffering from PTSD and debilitating injuries - is sent to a mental hospital. As Faraday grows closer to the Hundreds residents, their fates grow more grim. When he was a poor, local child, Faraday visited this once-great home, and ever since then, he has been entranced by it. Our unnerving guide through this world is Faraday ( Domhnall Gleeson), a doctor who makes a house call to the dilapidated mansion, Hundreds Hall, in which the remaining members of the Ayres family reside. (Despite what advertisements may lead you to believe.) Instead, it's a meditation on Britain's class system that leaves you guessing as to who is perpetrating the evils that befall the film's characters. While there's a ghostly element that pervades director Lenny Abrahamson's adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel, The Little Stranger, it's not explicitly a horror film.

This post contains spoilers for the ending of The Little Stranger.

The little stranger novel