Film Review

Rebecca (2020) • Netflix

A young newlywed arrives at her husband’s imposing family estate on a windswept English coast and finds herself battling the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca…

It’s 80 years since Alfred Hitchcock made his version of Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca, so it’s high time the story was revamped for a modern audience. Director Ben Wheatley does it well, as the Gothic touches are all there, together with the romance. His first film, Down Terrace (2009), was a crime drama that also centred on familial mistrust, marriage, and murder… but set inside a terraced house in Brighton, not a stately home in rugged Cornwall.

Next came Kill List (2011) and Sightseers (2012), which further showcased Wheatley’s talent for mixing nasty with funny. A Field in England (2013) was a hallucinogenic historical set during the English Civil War, which he followed by guest-directing Doctor Who (2014’s “Deep Breath”, the brilliant intro for Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor) but even so he admitted that to adapt a beloved novel like Rebecca was a “big responsibility” and perhaps too…