#southern-gothic

#southern-gothic

A fatally overdosed mother called Jacey is unceremoniously bundled into a trunk at the start of this southern US-set drama; the uncredited actor who plays her should probably have a word with her agent, as the role is surely in contention for a world record as the least likely to boost your career. Jacey is just one of the drug casualties littering director Dan Kay's underpowered film about the US's super-strength opioid crisis, as her two bereaved daughters desperately tread water in the aftermath.

The story begins with the narrator recalling Emily Grierson's death as many of the town's residents attended her funeral in her once refined and grand home, which had fallen into disrepair. While alive, Emily had not permitted any of these folks to enter the house for the past decades, except her servant Tobe. "What secret was she concealing" thought many in the town?

A woman lives in a garden surrounded by high rock walls. Moss and lichen grow like the hair and skin of something ancient over the cobblestone. Everything in the garden is old, and even new things are aged by the air inside of it. No one can come in, nor can she get out. She sees a figure passing outside between the cracks in the wall and wonders who they are,

Greg Iles was a gifted storyteller whose works often centered on the complexities of race and class in the South, particularly during the Jim Crow era.