Film Review

Nocturne (2020) • Amazon [Welcome to the Blumhouse]

An incredibly gifted pianist makes a Faustian bargain to overtake her older sister at a prestigious institution for classical musicians.

The Devil, they say, has all the best tunes. But it’s rare he gets so deeply involved in music as he does in Nocturne, writer-director Zu Quirke’s debut feature; another damp squib in Amazon Prime’s exclusive ‘Welcome to the Blumhouse’ horror strand.

The concept is good, if unoriginal. Two sisters, Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) and Vivian (Madison Iseman), are both piano students at a high school for gifted kids, but Madison’s starting to eclipse her younger sibling both musically and socially. After a fellow student kills herself in bizarre circumstances, however, Juliet finds a book of hers containing music, indecipherable inscriptions, and strange drawings.

She soon discovers the book makes ambitions come true — but at a cost. (You’d be disappointed if you acquired a book full of weird images and it didn’t lure you into a Faustian Pact, right?) Juliet’s star suddenly begins…