Director Guillem Morales tries to trick the audience with too many plot twists, but winds up diluting the effectiveness of his thriller.
Early on in “The Wasp,” Naomie Harris provides an elaborate description of tarantula hawks, a species of spiders that feeds on other tarantulas. They paralyze their prey before eating them alive. It’s a gruesome idea that writer-director Guillem Morales clearly intends to circle back around to in his twisty two-hander, which stars Natalie Dormer and Harris as two former friends embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game of violence and intimidation. Unfortunately, Harris’ monologue marks the highlight of the film. None of the plot swerves — and there are far too many of them — manage to reach that apex of encroaching dread.
Harris is Heather, a wealthy childless Londoner in a tense marriage with Simon (Dominic Allburn). In middle school, she was friends with Carla (Dormer), who’s now a grocery store cashier with four kids, a fifth on the way and a hopeless drunk gambler for a husband. The disparity in their social and economic standing serves as an obvious plot motivation for Carla to be desperate to take whatever Heather is offering, though the screenplay by Morgan Lloyd Maclolm, which is based on his play of the same title, fails to utilize that to complicate the characters or their relationship to each other.
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Malcolm is more interested in using motherhood and pregnancy as metaphors in dialogue heavy with references to wasp behavior. While Heather is desperate for a child of her own, Carla would easily give up one for monetary gain. In flashbacks, the origin of their turbulent relationship is revealed. As the film unfolds, Heather offers Carls a way out of poverty that naturally comes with a heavy price. Then the audience sees how their friendship became antagonistic and why neither can be trusted to be honest with the other.
Harris and Dormer are committed to the calculated interplay between their characters. Together they build a palpable sense of both hatred and attraction, and yet, every time that tension comes close to boiling over, Malcolm and Morales cut away to a flashback where Heather and Carla are played by Leah Mondesir-Simmonds and Olivia Juno-Cleverley, respectively. Most of these serve as red herrings to the mystery at the center of the narrative. The actors try to maintain the focus on the characters, but the screenplay fails them as it becomes more convoluted and trite, as if it’s merely trying to distract until the final twisty reveal.
As the plot gets more gimmicky, Harris’ performance gets weaker. She teases out the psychology of a woman crumbling under unmet expectations who is also unsupported by her husband. But as the plot contorts Heather into histrionics, Harris cannot bring enough credibility to the character. Meanwhile, Dormer goes in the other direction. She starts as a stereotype of a working-class complainer, but keeps adding complex shades to the character as the film goes on, subtly revealing the pain behind the anger. Both actresses could have benefitted from a screenplay that prioritized character over trying to bewilder audiences for cheap thrills.
Morales, who directed many episodes of the morbidly humorous British TV anthology series “Inside No. 9,” should have tried to bring more of that dark wit to this film. Here there are too many schematic storylines, not enough playfulness. Morales wisely relies on his two lead actors to bring taut vitality to the proceedings. However, as he keeps putting in many circular scenes that don’t differ much from each other, the intensity of their performances starts to feel inconsistent.
“The Wasp” had the potential to pay off that early promise, but in relying too much on tricking the audience, it loses the narrative thread and leaves its capable cast stranded. This is a case of a screenplay that pushes too hard toward shrewd reveals but loses its way and ends somewhere between dubious and improbable.
‘The Wasp’ Review: Naomie Harris and Natalie Dormer Play Old Friends With Fresh Grievances
Reviewed online, Aug. 28, 2024. In Tribeca Film Festival. Running time: 95 MIN.
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