Film Road to Halloween: The Sonata (2019) FrightFest 2019

The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 50 days to go.

Many elements of The Sonata are familiar, but don’t let that put you off. The sum of its parts is very worthwhile, beautiful, atmospheric and precise. Estranged father and daughter, a cipher in precious manuscripts, a haughty violin prodigy and an empty mansion… I’m sure you see what I’m saying. But if The Ninth Gate or The Perfection spring to mind, I can assure you the resemblance is no more than momentary.

If you were drawn to The Sonata because of Rutger Hauer’s name (as I was), I’m sorry to say this is not his film. He’s only in it just about long enough to merit his name in the credits, and those brief scenes (largely in flashback) do not exactly give him a Harry Lime strength of presence. But don’t let that put you off either, the cast we do see plenty of are terrific.

Freya Tingley (Once Upon a Time) plays Rose, a world famous violinist, who’s not quite mature enough to handle the life that brings. Unsurprisingly, therefore, she has an older mentor/manager who looks after everything for her, Charles, played by Simon Abkarian (Casino Royale). Charles becomes even more protective of Rose, her talents and her estate when he discovers that she is the daughter of the late Richard Marlowe (Rutger Hauer, Bladerunner, etc.), a renowned and notorious composer.

Marlowe has recently died by his own hand, leaving Rose everything, including a spooky mansion in France and a cryptic sonata that no-one had known he had been working on. The film is about the purpose behind this music and the reason behind his death.

It’s also about the power of music, but it feels weird saying that when I said just the same thing about an utterly different film recently: Yesterday. But actually, music is given more focus in The Sonata than any of those characters I’ve mentioned. People talk about it, compete for it and use it for nefarious purposes. We see it, hear it, swept along by it like Rose and Charles. I’m talking about both the music which is integral to the story and the film’s score. They somehow fit together well while remaining distinct.

Janis Eglitis’s cinematography deserves some praise too, though there’s an overhead shot of a car driving through a forest, near the start, which I feel I’ve seen too many times by now. The house itself is given an old fashioned, rural hue, reminding me of The Awakening or The Orphanage. Yet there is also a huge amount of light, and precisely lit detail.

What occasionally lets The Sonata down is the special effects. This is a horror film (despite what IMDB says), and CGI effects are inevitable. But there is so much that’s virtually real enough to touch that the less real images jar and are difficult for the eye to accept. I wish they had been more effective, because the story needed them, and the story overall was original. And this issue is especially unfortunate as one of the CGI drenched scenes was right at the start.

The Sonata is Andrew Desmond’s first feature film as director though, and overall, it is a success. The familiar elements are presented in a believable way, so that the slightly cliched manner hardly matters at all. The music and mystery together carried me along, thinking I knew how it was going to end, and content when I found myself wrong. Hopefully many people will watch The Sonata, not just Rutger Hauer fans. And hopefully, Rutger Hauer fans will be pleasantly surprised.