ANEMONE - Mark Reviews Movies

Anemone, Focus Features

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 2, 2025

Daniel Day-Lewis returns from a second retirement from acting in Anemone, which is surely not-so-coincidentally the debut feature from director Ronan Day-Lewis, the actor's son. The two co-wrote the screenplay, as well, which gives the father a richly enigmatic character to play and the son plenty of room to create a moody atmosphere.

Those are nicer ways of saying that, on a story level, the movie is shallow to its core. It's an exercise in obfuscation by way of pregnant pauses of the elephantine variety, characters who have a habit of not saying what they want or need to say until much later, and so much hinting at some deeper ideas about guilt and trauma that one might be mistaken in believing the movie actually has something to say about those ideas.

We'll start with the dramatic pauses, because the movie's introduction is essentially an extended one. In silence, we meet two men, one named Ray (Day-Lewis), who lives in shack in the middle of the woods completely obscured by trees, and the other called Jem (Sean Bean). Ray goes about his daily routine of chores and sitting quietly, while Jem wordlessly bids farewell to his wife Nessa (Samantha Morton) and 20-something-year-old son Brian (Samuel Bottomley).

Jem hops on a motorcycle, drives quite a ways up the highway and into a forest, where he opens a note in a sealed plastic baggie. It is labeled "in case of emergency" and has GPS coordinates that lead, of course, to Ray's cabin. Ray realizes who his visitor is, opens the door, puts down the hatchet he had readied in case of some ill-meaning intruder, and prepares a drink for his guest.

From there, the two men stare at each other or evade the other's gaze for a while, and it's a very good thing Day-Lewis, the filmmaker, offers a painterly depiction of the landscape and these faces lit by the minimal sun streaming through the windows or the glow of gas lanterns. There is, for example, an establishing shot of the forest, with a stretch of field in the foreground and swirling storm clouds hovering above the trees, that is so striking as to firmly set both the locale and the tone of the entire tale. As for the actors, this is a cast filled with ones who know how to fill silence with some look, some gesture, or even some little movement of the mouth that tells us, even though they aren't saying a word, their minds are actively considering something.

As for what that may be, we gradually learn that Ray and Jem are brothers, that they were sons of an abusive father who infused their thinking with violence, and that Ray suffered abuse from a local priest. Day-Lewis gets two lengthy monologues here, one in which he describes real or imagined vengeance upon that priest and the other in which he finally explains why the story exists in the first place. Sure, it's fascinating to see how much the actor can bring to an entirely internalized performance, but when Day-Lewis sinks his teeth into those speeches, we realize how much the movie has wasted his talents with so many shots of uncertain anger and regret.

If that's the case with one of the greatest actors alive, imagine how unfortunate the material is for the rest of the cast. Bean's Jem, for example, has come to convince his brother to talk to Brian, because the young man has joined the army, keeps getting into fights, and seems set on a course of self-destruction.

Both Jem and Ray were in the British military during the Troubles, but no matter how much Jem tries to convince Brian to leave the Army, his son won't listen. That might technically be because Ray is the young man's biological father, and Jem stepped up to marry Nessa and raise the boy after it became obvious his brother's trip to the woods would be a permanent stay.

That makes Jem little more than a plot device, especially since his own history is only relevant in how it relates to Ray's. As for Nessa, Morton gets to stand around looking quite sad about everything, which she does quite well, of course, and Bottomley's Brian lies in bed, tending to his bloody knuckles and staring blankly in general or whenever anyone asks what's on his mind. It's not just Jem, then, because everything and everyone in this movie revolves around Ray, what he did and why he did it, and whether or not he'll decide to talk to his son about, well, anything at all. It's very strange to consider that the entire movie is basically asking if there's a possibility that some drama might happen later.

It certainly doesn't here, because that would require an understanding of who these characters are, beyond some vague notion of what they want at this particular moment. Anemone eventually reveals a good amount about Ray and why he has secluded himself, but once Day-Lewis nails that monologue, the movie is essentially finished before any real drama can begin.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products