Metacritic reviews

The performances are buttressed by a production that subtly underscores the intentions of both the characters and the plot, from the costumes by Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh (“Love & Friendship”) to the score from Andrew Hewitt (“The Stanford Prison Experiment”), which coax the film along to where it’s going without ever being too obvious about it.

Stacie Passon, director of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, sharply channels the author’s atmosphere of dread, paranoia, and isolation, making the past feel prescient.

Under Stacie Passon’s precise direction, this gothic fable of isolation and violence expertly treads a fine line between tragedy and camp.

Incorporating elements of drama and suspense, Passon’s pic avoids directly confronting her heroines' covertly sociopathic tendencies, preferring to view them as the outcome of internalized trauma rather than criminal intent.

While the overwrought dialogue does test attention spans, its prevailing message — humanity is malignant and inherently wicked— and the hint of something more cryptic makes Passon’s film beautifully disturbing.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle isn’t for the torture porn crowd, and R-rated horror fanatics will no doubt find it dull. They won’t be totally in the wrong for thinking so. But the rest of us can appreciate the chill and growing dread that only a most sympathetic Shirley Jackson adaptation can deliver, that only a production as accomplished as this can manage.

While having all the key elements of a mystery, director Stacie Passon’s film is more a character study focusing on themes of the safety of sisterhood and self-imposed alienation.

Heightened but airless, this “Castle” is like a checklist of the novel’s peculiarities, rather than its singular soul brought to life.