Separation

There are more puppets than toys in Jeff and Maggie's Brooklyn house. They're the Grisly Kin, the monsters from the comic that made Jeff's name, and his eight-year-old daughter Jenny treats them like family. That's where 'Separation' begins, the supernatural horror drama that took William Brent Bell back in 2021 to the unsettling dolls of 'The Boy' and 'Brahms: The Boy II'.

Jeff (Rupert Friend) is an illustrator who hasn't had a hit in years and lives off the salary of his wife Maggie (Mamie Gummer), a high-powered lawyer who was once his creative partner too. She's leaving him, she's suing for sole custody of their daughter and she plans to take her to Seattle. She never gets the chance: a car runs her down in the street and the driver doesn't stop.

Suddenly a widower, Jeff is left with Jenny (Violet McGraw), but his wealthy father-in-law Paul (Brian Cox), who never could stand him, takes him to court to win the girl. The babysitter, Samantha (Madeline Brewer), throws herself into helping father and daughter rather more than the job requires. And the house starts to change. Jeff has red-soaked visions of his creatures at full size, while Jenny seems to be talking to a figure that may well be her mother's ghost.

Critics read the premise as 'Kramer vs. Kramer' with ghosts, and the casting has a wink in it: Gummer is the daughter of Meryl Streep, who played the mother fighting for her son in that film. Friend is a long way from his CIA agent in 'Homeland', Cox brings a little of Logan Roy from 'Succession' with him, and McGraw had already been frightened on screen in 'The Haunting of Hill House' and 'Doctor Sleep'. Contortionist Troy James plays one of Jeff's creatures, with a backwards crawl on all fours that calls 'The Exorcist' to mind. Nick Amadeus and Josh Braun wrote the script, and much of it was shot on the streets of Brooklyn.

Open Road Films and Briarcliff Entertainment opened it in US cinemas on 30 April 2021, as theatres were still coming out of the pandemic closures, and it debuted fourth with $1.8 million. Reviews were overwhelmingly harsh on the script and the scares, though The Hollywood Reporter singled out Friend's performance. Universal released it on DVD in the US that July.

• Drama
• Horror
• Mystery