Jonathan Demme’s Beloved is one of those cinematic curiosities where you find yourself whispering halfway through, “Is this supposed to be scary, sad, or just an elaborate endurance test?” By the end of its nearly three-hour runtime, you realize it’s all three—scary in its ability to bore, sad in its waste of talent, and an endurance test that makes a Lord of the Rings marathon look like a TikTok video.
Based on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, the film had the raw material to be a devastating gothic masterpiece. Instead, Demme—who once gave us the perfection of The Silence of the Lambs—decided to trade Hannibal Lecter for Oprah Winfrey sobbing in a poltergeist-infested farmhouse while Thandiwe Newton hisses and drools like a feral toddler who just discovered sugar.
The Oprah Winfrey Horror Hour
Oprah Winfrey stars as Sethe, a woman tormented by trauma, guilt, and an angry ghost. She was also the producer, which explains why this film has all the subtlety of a three-hour Oprah special titled When Your Daughter Comes Back From the Dead and Eats All Your Biscuits.
Winfrey is a phenomenal presence on television, but here she spends most of the film either wailing in slow motion or glaring with such intensity you’d think she was about to hand out free cars to the entire town of Cincinnati. “YOU get a poltergeist! And YOU get a poltergeist!”
Her big dramatic scenes, where Sethe relives her horrific past, should be devastating. Instead, they’re framed with the same intensity as a Hallmark melodrama. The horror of slavery and infanticide becomes smothered under molasses-thick monologues and enough Oscar-bait gravitas to sink the Titanic.
Thandiwe Newton: The Human Cat Meme
Enter Beloved, Sethe’s reincarnated daughter, played by Thandiwe Newton. Imagine if someone tried to crossbreed a toddler, a banshee, and a malfunctioning Furby. That’s Newton’s performance.
She spends much of the film grunting, licking, and babbling in baby talk that makes you wish the ghost would just haunt someone else. At one point she immobilizes Danny Glover with what can only be described as the most confusing seduction scene ever filmed. Watching Newton drool, coo, and attempt “sexy possession” is like watching a toddler try to hump a teddy bear—it’s weird, it’s wrong, and you want to look away but can’t.
If the intent was to make Beloved uncanny and disturbing, congratulations, mission accomplished. But she’s disturbing in the wrong way, more “oh God, someone take her to daycare” than “demonic presence that threatens your soul.”
Danny Glover, Trapped in a Soap Opera
Danny Glover, usually a reliable grounding force, plays Paul D, Sethe’s suitor. His job is to provide warmth, humanity, and something resembling a plot. Instead, he spends most of the movie wandering in and out of scenes looking like he wishes he was back chasing drug dealers with Mel Gibson.
His chemistry with Oprah is nonexistent. Their love story is less “tragic romance” and more “two coworkers forced to slow-dance at the office holiday party.” When Newton’s Beloved crashes their lives, Glover is reduced to a shell-shocked extra, caught between Oprah’s tears and Newton’s feral shrieking.
The Horror: Pacing That Could Kill a Horse
Beloved runs nearly three hours, and you feel every minute like a punishment from Satan himself. Scenes linger far past their expiration date. Characters stare, breathe heavily, and cry in real time. You could bake a casserole, pay your taxes, and come back to find Oprah still gasping in the same damn shot.
This isn’t atmosphere—it’s cinematic waterboarding. Gothic horror thrives on dread and momentum, but Demme gives us arthouse molasses, where ghosts whisper about breast milk for ten straight minutes and everyone acts like this is profound instead of profoundly uncomfortable.
The Ghost That Wasn’t
For a movie about a poltergeist and reincarnation, Beloved is shockingly devoid of scares. Sure, the ghost rattles some furniture early on, but after that it’s mostly metaphors and melodrama. Morrison’s novel used supernatural elements to explore slavery’s generational trauma. Demme’s film uses them to bore audiences into submission.
By the time the exorcism happens, it’s less terrifying than a choir rehearsal. A bunch of women show up to sing and pray loudly until Beloved waddles out of existence. No ectoplasm, no explosions, no fireworks—just group therapy with tambourines.
If you showed The Exorcist this scene, it would spit pea soup in disgust.
The Academy Loves a Costume
The film did snag an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design, which is fitting because the clothes are the most interesting characters. The bonnets, the period dresses, the frayed coats—they all have more personality than anyone on screen. Watching Oprah twirl in a Civil War–era gown is oddly more engaging than any of the endless crying jags.
Box Office Ghost Town
Despite the hype and Oprah’s star power, Beloved tanked at the box office. Why? Because no one wants to spend their Friday night watching Thandiwe Newton drool on herself for three hours. The trailers promised a haunting. What audiences got was a tragic history lesson delivered like a community theater séance.
People left theaters not with chills, but with the realization they could’ve rewatched Practical Magic instead. At least Sandra Bullock knew how to mix witches with entertainment.
The Real Tragedy
What’s frustrating is that Morrison’s Beloved is a masterpiece, layered with symbolism and raw emotion. It’s about slavery’s scars—visible and invisible—and how the past refuses to stay buried. Adapting it into a film was always going to be a challenge. But Demme and company went for literalism, stuffing every metaphor into a bloated runtime until the haunting became homework.
Instead of dread, we get indulgence. Instead of terror, we get tedium. Instead of a gothic masterpiece, we get Oprah Winfrey Presents: Paranormal Book Club.
Final Verdict
Beloved (1998) isn’t just a box office bomb—it’s cinematic purgatory. It’s where good intentions go to die, buried under overacting, endless monologues, and pacing so slow it makes Barry Lyndon look like an action flick.
Oprah tries. Newton tries. Glover tries. Even the costumes try. But no amount of effort can save a film that confuses haunting with watching people cry in slow motion for 172 minutes.
