Intensity: 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Adrian Langley
Written by Adrian Langley and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait is an adaptation of one of Poe’s shortest works. It visits the intersection where life, art, and death collide. The story is brought to modern times, where a thief, an artist, and an art dealer are all drawn into the influence of a spirit bound to a remarkable portrait. As is the tradition for translations of Poe’s stories, the film is suitably melancholy, but it injects some welcome humor into the proceedings, while maintaining the core theme of the original story.
The Oval Portrait is only a few pages long, but it packs in a memorable message. In it, the narrator is a wounded man who takes shelter in an old abandoned mansion that has retained its considerable art collection. Hiding in the corner is a remarkable portrait of a beautiful girl, on the cusp of womanhood. He discovers a journal of the artist, who sought to capture the image of his young bride perfectly. He succeeds, but at significant cost, as he becomes more enamored with the portrait than his actual wife. By the time he finishes painting the portrait, his young wife has died.
Originally, this story was published as “Life is Death” in 1842, which is an on-the-nose description. The Oval Portrait influenced the Portrait of Dorian Gray. Both stories explore loss and the reflection of the portrait subject’s life and death. Paintings are involved works of art, far more so than a mere photograph. Portraits require patience and careful attention, and the memorable ones capture timeless moments.
If the film had taken a direct approach, it would have been a very short film, not a feature-length movie. Langley added some layers and depth to the short story by linking the woman’s spirit to haunt the painting. Loss haunts all of the newly added characters. Bummers all around! A satisfying, redemptive plot thread binds these themes together and ties the movie’s expanded narrative together.
The Cast of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait
- Pragya Shail plays Ava, a young artist who is struggling to find a career worthy of her artistic talents.
- Michael Swatton plays Whitlock, a shopkeeper of antiques and curios who sells his pieces by appointment only. In his collection is The Oval Portrait.
- Paul Thomas plays Julian, an art thief who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He relies upon hired muscle to do the actual breaking and entering.
- Louisa Capulet plays Gora, the woman in the painting, now a ghost.
- Simon Phillips plays Grayson, the man who has hired Julian, and is running out of patience following multiple failed attempts to acquire the painting.
A Synopsis of The Oval Portrait
A burglar breaks into a basement window of an old brick building. This is an antique shop, and its musty collection of antiques is unprotected from burglar alarms or any sort of detection. The prowler finds his target, a portrait, covered by a sheet. When he reveals the piece, a haunting image of a young woman, rendered to near life-like accuracy, a figure emerges behind him. The ghost of the portrait snuffs the life out of the would-be thief. In the morning, Whitlock discovers the body, hauls it downstairs, and incinerates it in the furnace.
We are then introduced to Ava, who is about to have an awful day. Her boyfriend dumps Ava at the library. Afterwards, she heads to work, only to find out that she has been let go from the art publication where she had been interning. Print journalism is no longer a profitable venture, and now Ava is out of a job. She rallies from her losses, shrugging them off and her mother’s inquiries, determined to revive her dormant art career. Ava looks for a place to get an easel and discovers Whitlock’s store nearby. She sets up an appointment once she learns that he has an easel for sale.
The disappearance of the man he sent to retrieve the portrait mystifies Julian. After Grayson threatens him for stalling, he finds another bagman to recover the painting, being too cowardly to do it himself. Ava, upon meeting the graceful and sad Whitlock, becomes entranced by his countenance. Gora’s ghost picks up on this attraction and follows Ava in jealous curiosity.
The ghost is in motion, and so is the next burglary attempt. Destinies will collide, and Whitlock is the key to the whole mystery.
Evaluation
This little British independent film has a somber sweetness about it. The core story of a painting made out of misappropriated love and the desire to set things right bears all the hallmarks of a dark Gothic romance. Swatton plays his role with grace. He is polite and kind, but he also bears the burden of huge secrets. He is much more than he seems, with a deeply personal connection to the portrait. Shail is our narrative center, and the audience’s point of view. Ava’s resilience to her situation endears her to Whitlock, and the bond between them is endearing, though it also raises the ire of Gora.
Paul Thomas excels as the cowardly loser of a larceny fence. He brings pathetic comic relief to what would otherwise be a very stolid tale. I found myself rooting for this sad sack, as each attempt upon the portrait falls flat. The deep backstory of Grayson’s desires for the portrait remains somewhat unresolved, and by the end of the film, the heist motivations felt like a dead-end red herring.
Not surprisingly, this movie burns at a slow pace. It’s Poe, after all. If you are a fan of lyrical Gothic tales, this movie will appeal to you. Ghost story fans also will enjoy this work. However, horror fans who like their ghost stories with blood and body horror should look elsewhere. I appreciate emotionally linked ghost stories, and this did not disappoint.
Concluding Thoughts:
If you are a fan of the Corman era Poe interpretations from the 1960s, you will be right at home here. This is not a period tale, though, so it isn’t a costume drama. It does strike the same tones, though. Read the short story. It will inform you of the background, without actually spoiling anything. Granted, the language is 19th-century dense, but it is a quick read. The movie is unrated, but would probably earn a PG-13 rating. The violence and ghostly encounters would scare little kids, but teenagers should be just fine. This movie showed at the 2025 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and will be released on October 10 in limited theatrical release and streaming.
Review by Eric Li
