Jeff Vahn (Rupert Friend) is a struggling comic book artist who hasn't had success since he torpedoed a licensing deal for his breakout comic The Grisly Kin. Tensions are mounting between Jeff and his wife Maggie (Mamie Gummer) who voices her frustration with being the primary support for the household and feels Jeff isn't being an attentive father to their daughter Jenny (Violet McGraw), spending more time with babysitter, Samantha (Madeline Brewer). Backed by her father Paul Rivers (Brian Cox), Maggie initiates divorce proceedings against Jeff fighting for sole custody until Maggie is killed in a hit and run. Despite Maggie's death, Paul makes his intentions clear he will fight for custody of Jenny. As Jenny exhibits odd behaviors and Jeff experiences vivid nightmares, his collaborator on a horror comic, writer Alan Ross (Simon Quarterman), shares his views on the paranormal that Maggie may not be done with Jenny.
Directed by William Brent Bell and written by noted producer Josh Braun of History of Violence, House of the Devil, and Creep with a co-writing credit by noted creator of Sci-Fi channel comic book series, The Anti-Gravity Room, Nick Amadeus. Separation combines the familiar horror tropes seen in Bell's other work whilst also touching upon familial discord and comic book/graphic novel elements. I can't say it fully works, but it did keep me engaged until the very end wondering how they were going to tie the elements together.
Rupert Friend does a good job playing a struggling father who's a bit of a mess professionally and personally as he's never really moved past his one point of success with The Grisly Kin and has shown reluctance to move past his initial success with the work or collaboration or compromise with others in the industry, it's certainly a solid character even if it doesn't give him high ground as a father. Violet McGraw does okay as Jenny, she handles the material about as well as can be expected, but there is something about how the character is conveyed that reminds me of those mid 2000s films like Hide and Seek or Godsend that tried to capture the ambiance of The Ring or The Sixth Sense in a way that felt kind of forced. It's not like this character type hasn't been done well as the film What Maisie Knew showed a similar child character in the middle of a messy divorce or even in similar genre films like Mike Flannagan's Before I Wake that used horror iconography mixed with exploration of a child's mind in dealing with unprocessed grief and PTSD. Separation feels like it's trying to tackle similar issues but there's a bit of a disconnect between the themes it addresses and how it presents them, especially since it relies upon the character of Jenny spelling out "the point" at the climax of the movie.
I did enjoy the various physical manifestations of The Grisly Kin characters (even if much of their incorporation was mostly used for fake outs albeit very nice looking ones), and there is a fun performance with director Bell's frequent collaborator Simon Quarterman playing Alan Ross, in a cute reference to comic writer Alan Moore and comic artist Alex Ross, who was actually an enjoyable character filling the horror checkbox of "occult expert" that works on another level with Alan Moore being a practicing wizard in real life (look it up). Quartermain's performance is so good I actually wouldn't mind seeing him reprise this master comic writer/occult expert in another movie because it's a really strong character and performance.
Separation is just okay. It's not boring because it's got such a bizarre mixture of elements with its Comic Book references, family melodrama, and Henry Selick/Tim Burton esque monster designs that I found it to be a watchable sit all things considered. I can't say exactly that it "worked", but this isn't a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, nor is it a 4.6 on IMDb, it probably belongs somewhere around a 5.5 if I'm being honest.
