The Wasp
Carla (Natalie Dormer, HBO's 'Game of Thrones'), a supermarket cashier heavily pregnant with her fourth child, is astonished when old middle school mate Heather (Naomie Harris, "Skyfall," "Moonlight"), who lives in a beautifully appointed stone Georgian home in Bath, contacts her out of the blue and proposes she murder her husband for 50K pounds. Needing the money, as Heather knew she would, Carla agrees, but when she arrives at Heather’s home to discuss plans and notices Heather’s husband Simon’s (Dominic Allburn) collection of mounted and framed insects, she should pay heed to what Heather tells her about “The Wasp.”
Laura's Review: B
Writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm opens up his two-hander play to include more characters, like the detested husband who is the film’s ostensible catalyst, but director Guillem Morales maintains its staginess, emphasizing the two female performances at its core. Harris and Dormer go toe to toe from opposite sides of a societal ring, each formidable in her own right.
The film begins rather literally, Heather catching yet another wasp in her kitchen, the sound of their buzzing overt on the soundtrack. Her query to Simon about calling an exterminator is countered with a demand of her to order wine for some business entertainment he expects her to ace, but on the night of the party, Heather becomes absorbed by the sight of a wasp emerging from the smoke detector on the kitchen ceiling and, taking a hammer to it, creates a hole big enough for a wasp’s nest to fall to the floor, creating an abrupt end to Simon’s soiree. He walks out and it’s obvious he’ll be out all night.
In bed, Heather has sleeping/waking recollections of her childhood (where she’s played by "The Silent Twins’” Leah Mondesir-Simmonds) finding a gravely injured pigeon with her friend Carla (Olivia Juno Cleverley), who, without compunction, picks up a rock to ‘put it out of its misery.’ This is the memory Heather calls up during her uncomfortable meeting with Carla, where Heather calls conspicuous attention to their class difference with her statement ‘in my world, men respect women,’ her explanation for wanting her cheating, abusive husband dead. But Malcolm’s already tipped his hat that a twist is on the horizon with Heather’s absurd confidence that she can hire a school mate she hasn’t seen in decades to not only kill her husband, but keep quiet about it.
He’s more subtle setting the stage for the third act with small details we may conveniently forget, although an early scene of Carla leaving her older husband in a chair with a cup of tea to climb into an expensive sports car waiting to pick her up immediately causes us to leap to a certain conclusion and Heather’s attention to her neighbor’s daughter Ruby (Isobel Hawkridge) pinpoints the girl as a plot device.
Once Carla arrives at Heather’s home, their true background comes to light in increasingly horrific flashbacks which frame the film’s theme of the abused becoming abusers, the ante continually being upped between the two, Harris and Dormer alternately garnering our sympathies only to have them switch a moment later, neither’s actions ever fully justified. But if Malcolm and Morales inadvertently reveal too much in early goings, they still surprise with one hell of a devious ending, one which will have the audience reconsidering just who embodies that tarantula wasp.
Robin's Review: B
Heather (Naomi Harris) is in an abusive marriage with Simon (Dominic Allburn) and the proverbial straw has broken the camel’s back. She remembers a particularly horrific event from her childhood and contacts Carla (Natalie Dormer), who she thinks has a killer’s instinct in “The Wasp.”
Directed by Guillem Morales and written by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, this two-hander begins one way and turns you on your ear by the end. This means that there is little to be said about this story of revenge – the viewer should find out for yourself.
Heather, when we meet her, is having a problem with wasps in the kitchen and traps one under a glass. The sound of its buzzing makes her crazy until she kills the annoying insect. Then, husband Simon demands that the evening’s all important business dinner be perfect.
Things go okay at first, until Heather finds a wasp and goes after it with a hammer, smashing the ceiling and dropping down the wasp nest and bursting on the floor. The dinner does not go as planned and Simon is pissed. His abuse pushes her over the edge and she contacts Carla with a “business” proposition – kill Simon for money.
This is where the description stops. From here, the story takes twists and turns that are too integral to the story to give away. What we get are two actors giving strong, and very different, performances. Both Harris and Dormer get the chance to give a distinct arc to their characters, going in opposite directions with one seemingly meek and the other strong.
The story twist, I have to say, was not an expected finale, but a satisfying one – in a strange way.
Shout! releases "The Wasp" in theaters on 8/30/24.
