Our take
Usually a film like this wouldn’t care to take the perspective of the perpetrator, and would instead dramatize a heavy, unsettling feeling around a victim being caught within their operation. But Felicia’s Journey doesn’t take that route– instead, at the same time, we meet both serial killer and potential victim through a snapshot of their lives, with writer-director Atom Egoyan adeptly intercutting Felicia’s Journey with Hilditch’s video-recorded childhood and Felicia’s much more natural flashbacks. It’s an interesting visual take on the 1994 novel, that doesn’t take the usual thriller motifs and that would rather linger on studying the characters. Felicia’s Journey might be Egoyan’s first non-R rated film, but it still delivers his signature uneasiness and eeriness he is known for.
What it won
Cannes
1 nom
The story
Seventeen and pregnant, Felicia travels to England in search of her lover and is found instead by Joseph Ambrose Hilditch, a helpful catering manager whose kindness masks unsettling secret.
Elsewhere
"Likely divide critics and viewers, this is a simpler and less layered film than other works from Egoyan, who seems unable to infuse the psychological thriller with his characteristic humor and irony."
— Emanuel Levy
After leaving Ireland to find her boyfriend in England, Felicia meets what seems to be a kindly old man that actually holds unsettling secrets.
The non-linear narrative might be a hit or miss for some viewers.
Stranger danger!
Streaming arrival
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
