'Nocturne' review: When the Devil gets boring

Director: Zu Quirke

Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Madison Iseman

Score: 1.5

"The Devil is in the detail," goes the phrase, and though Nocturne takes it a bit literally, it's a shame that the Devil could not get a good script for this, and has to make do with a strangely scribbled notebook instead.

Nocturne follows Juliet (Sweeney), a student at an arts school, who suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex towards her more successful sister Vivian (Iseman). One day, Juliet comes across a strange notebook with uncanny drawings, full of ominous implications, and through it she appears to overtake Vivian in a rather cruel manner.

The lynchpin to the entire plot of Nocturne, therefore, is the book. In the beginning, the book appears to drive a successful violinist to suicide, and slowly affects Juliet, showing her images of bright lights and supposedly making her act according to the images scribbled in it.

Nocturne likes to delve into bits and pieces of the arcane, using images of the Devil and Faustian deals to drive the story, but it never goes into more than the surface of the motivations that drive Juliet to ruthless means to achieve greatness. There's some small talk about jealousy, envy and a bit of the classic teenage lust, but it never really tries to elucidate what has driven the sisters apart in any meaningful manner, and resorts to using the book as a crutch to move things along.

There's some brief elements of discomfort in Nocturne, such as watching the ghost of the dead violinist or seeing acid-tripped imagery of the scribbed drawings moving, but beyond a small glimpse of how unknown things can terrify people, there's really no substance to the whole thing.

To close, Nocturne is not a particulary moving piece of...anything. The horror isn't there (though to be granted, it really doesn't seem like it's trying to scare), the drama is subpar, and the story itself leaves a lot to be desired.