The Wonder – Film Review

Set in The Irish Midlands in 1862, the story follows a young girl who stops eating but remains miraculously alive and well. English nurse Lib Wright is brought to a tiny village to observe eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell. Tourists and pilgrims mass to witness the girl who is said to have survived without food for months.

Sebastián Lelio certainly succeeded in making me feel creeped out and uncomfortable during the course of watching The Wonder; a psychological period drama that truly gets under your skin in so many ways. Sometimes you won’t even know why, but you’ll feel freaked out.

There’s something off about one of the girls in the movie, as Florence Pugh‘s character Elizabeth “Lib’ Wright comes to find out. Elizabeth, a nurse, comes to a rural Irish village and discovers that one of the young girls there has not eaten in four entire months, according to her family.

Of course, this concerns Elizabeth who wants to get to the bottom of things and figure out why she hasn’t eaten in so long, and why she’s even alive in the first place. Emma Donoghue, Alice Birch, and Lelio all come together to craft one of the most expertly unnerving scripts of the year, giving us information bit by bit, in a true example of a slow-burning build of a movie.

As the mystery unravels, the film does manage to become a little less tension filled, but for the vast majority of the running time, you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat trying to figure out what exactly is going on. The entire movie is quite pretentious to be completely honest, but it’s never really an issue until the third act which was way too heavy-handed.

Florence Pugh leads the film in the role of Elizabeth, and just like always, she’s phenomenal. The fact that she has yet to win an Oscar is an absolute travesty, as she is, in my humble opinion, the best actor of our generation. It truly doesn’t matter what role Pugh is given – she is going to absolutely nail it no matter what, and there’s no exception here.

If you’re on the lookout for a legitimately engrossing psychological thriller period drama that will keep you guessing for the majority of the film, you don’t need to look any further than The Wonder. It’s not one of the best movies of the year, but it definitely accomplished what it set out to do.