The Nightingale (2018)

While The Babadook was a terrifying experience in itself owed to the way Jennifer Kent utilised parental fear as the focus of its horror, The Nightingale goes further down the rabbit hole despite its lack of instant identification with the horror genre. This, in fact is more terrifying that anything we see in The Babadook’s obsession with a physical incarnation of a monster due to how authentic the events here feel.

Kent’s film is placed in 1825 and battles with so many dark, bleak themes of racism, slavery and the evil of man showcased through its gruelling images of rape against women. Within the first hour, I’d lost count of how many sequences of rape I’d covered my eyes through, but that’s the effectiveness of Kent’s drama more than anything. She’s painting this image of hell and none of the pain is filtered, the suffering obstructed or the themes explored without an explosive intensity attached towards them. After all, that is needed and no matter how difficult this film is to witness, Kent’s film is here to portray the heinous acts of mankind.

The Nightingale isn’t only fascinated by manifested and constructing itself as a feminist work of one woman’s battles against these aforementioned crimes, but goes down another avenue as it explores the connection of two unlikely sources coming together to find their own salvation through the struggles and trauma they’ve endured. Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr, both newcomers, play these tortured souls brilliantly and you can feel their pain in each moment. 

The nightmare sequences will not leave me for a very long time.

93/100