Review: Rebecca (2020)

Based on: 1938 Gothic novel by English author Dame Daphne du Maurier.

Starring: Armie Hammer & Lily James

Streaming: Netflix

I Would Say: 1.5/5

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The highly anticipated 2020 remake of the gothic classic Rebecca starring Lily James and Armie Hammer. The new Mrs DeWinters has to try and navigate her new life after a whirlwind romance and living out of the shadow of the now-dead original Mrs DeWinters, Rebecca. In a house where everything from the clothes, the rooms and the staff is not ready to let her memory go she must learn to live outside of the ghost, help her husband move on and the housekeeper leave her behind.

I first read Rebecca years ago for an English project, going into the book thinking I hated classics was probably the best thing I could have done, as I was so blown away by it, it's stuck with me ever since. I am not to say it swayed me over to the classical side of reading but it has always been that one book that I remember reading and don't quite know why I did.

So as you can imagine I like many people was very excited at the idea of a new modern remake shall we say? As soon as it started to stream on Netflix earlier in the week the comparisons between the 2020 version and the 1940 Hitchcock picture was all I was seeing quite literally anywhere I looked. And even now every review I read somewhere in the first paragraph good old Hitchcock appears. Ironically I know I seem to have done the same, but however from a different angle, because I have not watched the Hitchcock version, an forgive me, film fathers, for if that's a sin then oh well. I don't think it's fair to compare the makings of Hitchcock to films today. His films work because they were made in the 40s and the 50s they work because that's how they were intended to be seen, and comparing this version to that version for me does nothing except highlight how this film is not like Hitchcock's. Yet, of course, this story comes from the 1938 novel so comparing it to that I would say is a better match. Yet let's throw in some more irony because I'm not even going to really do that.

This film fell flat to watch I felt when I read the book. The book was full of twists and turns, secrets upon lies and full of scandals. This film was slow-moving, completely straight and riding off the success of the idea of it being based off a cult classic. I read somewhere that it reminded the watcher of a Marks and Spencers add and now that is all I can see, and I expect to see Lily James line trousers hanging up in the 'leftover from summer section.'

As I said before I'm not very good with classics, reading and watching them, for me they just don't appeal so I always think there needs to be something a little extra to get it going in my eyes. And with such success behind this title firstly in the book and then in the 'not to be named' Hitchcock version, there was a lot riding to make this something new and fresh. But somehow it fell very very flat. I can see what they were trying to do, they were trying to get the classic love, passion and rawness that we got when we saw Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice (2005), Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility (1995) but it didn't quite work out that way. It can take a lot to make a classic stand out and it takes, even more, to make an already loved classic with an already loved retelling stand out now in 2020. For me, I would have loved to have seen this approached from the bold party visuals and costumes of Baz Luhrmann (Great Gatsby 2013) or even the indie girlhood approach of Greta Gerwig (Little woman 2019.) Simply pulling together an okay script with okay costumes in an okay environment and an okay cast doesn't pull the classics off like they use to do.