Movie Review ~ The Wasp

I recently sat down and rewatched Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott’s open-road drama from 1991 that ignited a debate about equality in red-hot revenge that continues today.  What critics of the movie so quick to take it down a peg for its attitude toward payback are missing out on is how well Callie Khouri’s Oscar-winning script and the nominated performances of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon create one of the purest examples of friendship ever put on screen.  Buddy films featuring men misbehaving for no reason have received their flowers for years, but watching two women taking back an inch of the respect snatched away without remorse and choosing to fly off into the sunset instead of answering for it…now that was just too much.

I was thinking of this film while watching the new thriller The Wasp, starring Naomie Harris and Natalie Dormer, because it represents how the inroads made by Thelma & Louise have reached a dead end some 33 years after it was released.  Joining a long list of female-driven revenge thrillers that have come out within the last several years, movies like Promising Young Woman, Do Revenge, and A Simple Favor come to mind, The Wasp aims for an altogether tighter and more intimate affair.  While it begins with a simmering tension signaling it won’t follow a familiar trail, it struggles to create a unique identity in an increasingly complicated subgenre that pits women against women.

The wasps that have invaded the orderly London flat Heather (Harris, Rampage) shares with her husband Simon (Dominic Allburn) have become a nuisance, and she is not happy.  Simon was supposed to take care of this, but he’s been distracted with work and an upcoming dinner party, leaving easily addled Heather to stew over it.  This marriage has cracks, that’s obvious, but it’s not until Heather looks up her childhood friend Carla (Dormer, Rush) that we see just how far she is prepared to go to get out of this marriage.

When upper-class Heather finds Carla working the check-out line, pregnant, and living with a brood of children and a worthless husband, she sees an opportunity to benefit them both.  According to her, Simon is an abusive creep who won’t grant her a divorce, and if Carla kills him (an incident from their childhood reveals she may have it in her), Heather can be free, and Carla will be paid handsomely for getting her hands dirty.  Reluctant at first, Carla’s current situation all but forces her to take the offer, but in doing so, she accepts her place in a far larger web of deceit and trauma that stretches back decades.

Going into the film blind, it became apparent early on that The Wasp began its life as a stage play.  However its author, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, adapted her 2015 psychological thriller for the screen without fully shedding its theatrical skin. While its unique origin adds an intriguing layer to the film, it rarely comes off as a fully realized cinematic entity of its own and its intended intensity, which likely captivated audiences, doesn’t make the transition.  For me, the climactic payoff didn’t entirely justify the buildup because Malcolm’s screenplay paints itself into a corner early.  The ending, which must have been a corker of a gut punch for an audience to witness, comes off as slightly underwhelming without the immediacy of a live performance.  If anything, I wonder what a filmed stage production with Harris and Dormer might have looked like, perhaps harnessing the power of the script a bit more.

Even in a movie that’s inherently stage-bound, Harris and Dormer are captivating individually and together find an awkward chemistry that fits the piece’s mood.  The power dynamics of The Wasp are in constant flux, and both actresses pass the baton nimbly between them.  I especially liked Harris as the tightly wound Heather, a woman who gradually reveals she’s more than just a wife out to flee her violent husband.  The fraught desperation of the character Harris creates stands in contrast to the way Dormer begins The Wasp: aloof and over-it, only getting focused when she realizes she’s in over her head.

Director Guillem Morales was responsible for one of my favorite thrillers, the 2010 Spanish film Julia’s Eyes (see it; you’ll enjoy a few nice jump scares along the way).  The Wasp is mainly confined to a single location, a roadblock that would fell some directors but, based on his filmography, would seem to suit Morales just fine.  Yet there’s something about the look of the film, in cinematographer John Sorapure’s lens and lighting, that gives it a manufactured aesthetic rather than the chilly, manipulative artifice it needed to convince us we aren’t watching actors on a set. 

Morales can’t shake that limited immersion into the stakes of what transpires between the two women, and the psychological drama suffers because of it.  Credit is given to the director for trying every trick in the book to engage the viewer, from jarring flashbacks to tight close-ups, but he’s battling against substantial limitations hard-wired into the material.  You know that you should be leaning forward further in your seat eager to know what’s coming, but it never gets out of its own way to keep you engaged, at least not until a finale that is several shades of unpleasant.

For fans of the two leads, The Wasp offers a fine showcase for their considerable onscreen talent and, aside from a disturbing final act, is a relatively harmless showdown of thrills and wills.  That said, if you are looking for a fresh take on the female-driven revenge thriller (the kind of norm-breaking tidal wave like a Thelma & Louise which has women working together for a change), most audiences will find this B-movie has a less-than-lasting sting.  It makes a lot of noise (these characters love to shout!), but you may wish you could have seen it in its original form on stage, where its impact as a deviously devised mystery might have been far more powerful.