The Keeping Hours (4/5)

The Keeping Hours is a drama, horror, romance hybrid, but don’t let that scare you off.  Lee Pace and Carrie Coon star in this ghost story, which has a lot of heart – and pain.

The Keeping Hours might sound like a strange genre bender. And it is, in some ways. But really, aren’t most of the really interesting and engaging stories.

For this movie, we need to first understand why the main characters are together. And then we need to understand what went wrong. Since we know the story is about a couple losing their son, we have a pretty good idea of the reasons why.

Then again, there is often so much more than meets the eye. The Keeping Hours is a great example of just that!

Lee Pace and Carrie Coon

I have no problem admitting that I absolutely adore Lee Pace. It goes way back to the first TV movie he did (Soldier Girl) and was solidified by everything he’s done since.

These years, I just miss the TV show Halt and Catch Fire like crazy, whenever I see him on screen. Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, it really should. Most people have seen (or at least heard of) a movie with Lee Pace.

He plays the character of Ronan in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe and was Thranduil in The Hobbit trilogy.

In The Keeping Hours, he is the main protagonist. We do also follow his wife/ex-wife portrayed by Carrie Coon. You may know her from The Leftovers or Fargo TV shows as well as season 2 of The Sinner.

However, she was also in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. In fact, she’s also in the Marvel Universe since she played Proxima Midnight in Avengers: Infinity War.

In other words, both Lee Pace and Carrie Coon play characters who work for Thanos in the Marvel universe. In The Keeping Hours, however, they’re both good people that had something terrible happen to them.

No, this isn’t a horror movie

I realize most people won’t accept The Keeping Hours as a movie in the horror genre. Personally, I beg to differ.

I mean, the story in this movie is basically a ghost story. If that doesn’t belong in the horror genre, then where does it belong? Sure, it’s not a hardcore horror movie by any stretch of the imagination.

But it is a drama with elements of both the horror, romance, and thriller genres.

As such, the story in The Keeping Hours works really well for me. This isn’t a movie about demons or excorism, but rather a story about connecting with the dead. If you’re up for that, then you’ll be in the right frame of mind to watch this.

Director Karen Moncrieff

Karen Moncrieff directed The Keeping Hours and I hope she’ll go on to make more movies soon. She’s worked on TV productions recently, but also does movies like this one every now and then.

If you’ve watched her movie The Dead Girl from 2006, then you know you’ll be in for a treat. If you haven’t then you really should. She both wrote and directed The Dead Girl, which starred Toni Collette, Brittany Murphy, Marcia Gay Harden, Giovanni Ribisi, and many other very familiar faces.

For this new movie, the screenplay was written Rebecca Sonnenshine. Previously, Rebecca Sonnenshine has both written for and produced various TV shows such as The Vampire Diaries. She co-wrote the script for the horror movies The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008) and American Zombie (2007).

The Keeping Hours is out on Netflix in the US and Canada now!

Pssst… it won the audience award at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2017, so it’s already proved to be a crowd pleaser.

Details

Director: Karen Moncrieff
Writer: Rebecca Sonnenshine
Cast: Lee Pace, Carrie Coon, Sander Thomas, Amy Smart, Julian LaTourelle

Plot

Several years after the death of their son, a divorced couple is suddenly reunited by supernatural events that offer them a chance at forgiveness.