Whatever movie Lizzie wants to be, I’m not sure it really succeeds. It’s a murder mystery without much mystery, it’s a psychological thriller without an ounce of suspense. The film is based on the true story of Lizzie Borden, an American woman who was acquitted in the axe murder of her father and step-mother. Chloë Sevigny plays Borden, an unmarried landowner’s daughter with undiagnosed epilepsy. When the Borden household hires Irish housemaid Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart), Lizzie gets one of her first friends. Disdainful of her tyrannic father, Andrew (Jamey Sheridan), and fearful that people like her flighty step-mother Abby (Fiona Shaw) or her conniving uncle John (Denis O’Hare) will go after her inheritance, Lizzie begins to think of her future away from home, hopefully with Bridget. Sevigny and Stewart are as serviceable as ever and director Craig William Macneill crafts some truly disturbing sequences, but the film’s script (by Bryce Kass) feels both unstructured and uninterested. I was certainly the latter.

 

Directed by Craig William Macneill