[Film Review] We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018)

This review contains spoilers.

Stacie Passon’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) is slow burning and symbolic. Visually, it’s a stunning period piece that mixes a 1950s pastel-tinged backdrop with the gloominess of Shirley Jackson’s classic gothic novel. The film adapts a familiar tale about the horror of patriarchal oppression for a modern audience.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle invites us into  the reclusive lives of the ill-fated Blackwood family: the 18-year-old Mary Katherine (‘Merricat’), her older sister Constance and their ailing uncle Julian. After the mysterious deaths of the girls’ parents six years earlier, for which Constance was acquitted, the Blackwood sisters have become social pariahs in the local community. Plagued by rumours of witchcraft, poisoning and murder, the two confine themselves to their opulent family estate, caring for Uncle Julian and only venturing outside for essentials. 

These three remaining members of the Blackwood family escape into  their own fantasy worlds. Merricat collects trinkets and practices magic spells to protect her sister. Constance dreams of adventures in Europe when sitting alone at her dressing table. Uncle Julian obsessively writes a memoir that seems to drive him deeper into a pit of insanity with each new draft. The Blackwood family unit is fractured. In the absence of any real contact with the outside world, they become vulnerable to the charm and promise of Cousin Charles – a dashing but devious outsider who plans to weasel his way into their home and inheritance. 

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As Cousin Charles, Sebastian Stan creates an alluring but dangerous villain who switches between romantic flattery and explosive rage at the drop of a hat. If Fresh (2022) proved anything, it’s that Stan excels in playing these sexy psychopath characters that fascinate us. With a dead father and an uncle weakened by illness, the Blackwood household has a gaping patriarchal void that Charles makes it his business to fill, acting as a bizarre blend of paternal figure and love interest to Constance. Charles insidiously starts to assume the role of the patriarch, stepping into the shoes (quite literally) and clothes of Constance’s father, and sleeping in his bed. Charles’ interactions with Merricat are where we start to see the cracks in his seductive façade. Her discomfort around Charles is clear from the beginning, and her refusal to be controlled acts as the perfect foil to Constance’s dreamy naivety. 

The most striking part of this film is how it reworks Shirley Jackson’s original novel into a story of abuse and survival. An exchange between the two sisters reveals that Merricat murdered their parents by poisoning the sugar bowl at dinner because their father was a ‘wicked man’. While ambiguous to some extent, this detail implies sexual abuse, especially when considered alongside the film’s wider framing of Cousin Charles as an uncomfortable mix of father and suitor. Because Passon’s film adaptation makes a point of centring sexual violence and portraying patriarchal figures as abusers, it must create a satisfying final payoff for the audience. In the novel, Charles skulks off and leaves the sisters in ruin after a fire destroys the house. In the film, Charles meets a very different fate. He returns to the house, attacks Constance and is murdered by Merricat. Justice must be served; the monster must be slain. While patriarchal control in the domestic space may have been a significant anxiety for women in Jackson’s time, the way that Passion’s film shifts its focus to sexual violence speaks to a more contemporary female audience in the wake of #MeToo.

From the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) to the biopic Shirley (2020), Jackson’s stories are back in vogue. While gothic novels have always been about tyrannical patriarchs and women trying to escape them, there is something about Jackson’s emphasis on sisterhood, women breaking free and carving out their own safe spaces that feels especially relevant now. What We Have Always Lived in the Castle suggests is the hopefully possibility of burning down oppressive spaces and rebuilding them.

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