‘Destroyer’, starring Nicole Kidman

I missed Destroy­er first time around, when it was released in 2018. Inex­plic­a­bly, so did every­body else, and it grossed just $5 mil­lion, bare­ly half its bud­get. Which is crim­i­nal, as it’s one of the most intel­li­gent and grip­ping thrillers made in the last decade.

The fifth film by Karyn Kusama, it was writ­ten by her hus­band Phil Hay and his writ­ing part­ner Matt Man­fre­di, and is their third col­lab­o­ra­tion together. 

And although her fea­ture debut, Girl­fight (2000), was laud­ed at Sun­dance and Cannes, it fared poor­ly at the box office. As did her next two films, Aeon Flux (‘05) and Jennifer’s Body (’09). So she spent the fol­low­ing 5 or 6 years work­ing as a direc­tor for hire on television. 

But she went back to the sil­ver screen in 2015 for The Invi­ta­tion, a well-regard­ed hor­ror that had only a lim­it­ed release. But Destroy­er takes her work to a whole new level.

Con­fi­dent­ly plot­ted and impec­ca­bly script­ed, the direc­tion and cin­e­matog­ra­phy are con­stant­ly thought­ful and care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed. Which ought of course to be true for every film, but almost nev­er is. While the twist is low-key, sub­tle and, clev­er­ly, structural.

But the entire film revolves around the vor­tex that is Nicole Kid­man. The grav­i­ta­tion­al pull of her self-destruc­tion seems to drag the whole of Los Ange­les down into the hole she’s hell-bent in bur­row­ing for the grave she’s deter­mined to dig for herself.

Kidman’s a fun­ny one. Her choic­es are actu­al­ly almost always both chal­leng­ing and impres­sive­ly intel­li­gent. But the few duds are so glar­ing, they can be momen­tar­i­ly blind­ing. But real­ly, it’s only The Step­ford Wives (’04), Bewitched (’05) and Aus­tralia (08) that baf­fle. Birth (’04), Mar­got at the Wed­ding (’07) and Nine (’09), for instance, might not work as films, but they were all choic­es and risks worth taking.

This though is com­fort­ably her best per­for­mance, and is the answer she’ll give when St Peter asks her to point to the one thing that could move him to open the pearly gates for her.

As for Kusama, she pre­sum­ably finds her­self once more at a cross­roads. Hav­ing had her fin­gers burnt try­ing to pro­duce com­mer­cial fod­der for the Hol­ly­wood bean-coun­ters, she was once again offered the chance to get her hands on a siz­able bud­get, for a re-make of Drac­u­la, only to have the project can­celled. So which way does she go now, to the left or to the right?

Does she fol­low the path of Kathryn Bigelow, and trade in her intel­li­gence for dol­lar bills, or that of Lynne Ram­say (whose You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here I reviewed here) and Debra Granick, into the under­growth and uncer­tain­ty of the inde­pen­dent world?

I hope some­body sits her down and forces her to watch repeat­ed view­ings of Zero Dark Thir­ty (’12). There but for the grace of God…

You can see the trail­er for Destroy­er below:

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