Mark Llobrera
Shadow of a Doubt cover image

Shadow of a Doubt

Year
1943
Watched
Aug 14, 2023
Rewatch?
No

First time watching this, and I did not expect it to be so creepy, a Gothic horror story transposed onto small-town California life. Joseph Cotten, so scary. Teresa Wright sold me on the gradual slide from infatuation to a place of terror-filled paralysis. The incestuous subtext is barely that, can you imagine Hitchcock without the Hays Code? Maybe the forced restraint is better in the end.

It made me realize how many nods to this film are a part of Park Chan-wook’s Stoker—time to rewatch that one.