The Premise: Revenge Served Lukewarm, With a Side of Confusion
Mrs. Munck is the kind of movie that makes you want to double-check your prescription — not because you’re missing anything, but because you can’t believe someone actually thought this was a good idea. Directed by Diane Ladd, who also stars in the title role, this film wants to be a Southern Gothic revenge tale about love, abuse, and generational payback. What we get instead is a bizarre, molasses-paced therapy session soaked in awkwardness and tepid melodrama.
It’s like someone challenged a high school drama teacher to write Misery but told them to remove anything exciting or coherent — and then cast the PTA president in the lead role.
The Plot: Elderly Kidnapping Meets Low-Energy Flashbacks
Here’s the gist: Rose Munck (Ladd) kidnaps her ailing ex-lover, Patrick Leary (played by real-life ex-husband Bruce Dern), and moves him into her home to get some long-overdue revenge for the emotional and sexual abuse she suffered decades ago. Sounds intense, right?
Well, it’s not.
Instead of escalating tension, we get long scenes of Rose wheeling Patrick around like a piece of cursed furniture, staring at him with a mix of bitterness and badly lit nostalgia. We’re told through sluggish flashbacks that he was cruel to her in her youth. In return, she now subjects him to some form of moral house arrest — which mostly involves stewing in her robe while he drools in a chair. It’s less Gone Girl and more Gone Limp.
Diane Ladd: Talented, But Trapped in a Misfire
To her credit, Diane Ladd commits. She’s clearly trying to explore some deep emotional territory here — trauma, female agency, memory. But the script is so heavy-handed and the direction so stagey that her performance never gets out from under the weight of the metaphorical sandbags. It’s like watching someone drown in a bathtub of molasses.
You want to root for her. You want to understand her pain. But every monologue feels like it was written on a napkin at 2 a.m. during a wine-and-cheese-fueled grudge rant.
Bruce Dern: An Aging Prisoner of Plot
Bruce Dern spends most of the movie looking like he just smelled something foul and is too polite to say anything. Which, to be fair, is exactly the energy you’d need if your ex kidnapped you and kept you in a recliner surrounded by doilies.
There’s supposed to be a deep, fraught emotional war going on between these two characters, but honestly, it plays more like a passive-aggressive retirement home sitcom. You half expect a laugh track to kick in every time someone awkwardly mentions sex or death.
Tone: Southern Gothic Meets Public Access Channel
The biggest problem with Mrs. Munck — and there are many — is tone. It can’t decide if it’s a psychological thriller, a dark comedy, or a Southern family drama. It kind of flirts with all three before settling into “awkward dinner conversation with your estranged aunt.”
The film’s attempts at levity are unintentionally hilarious. There’s a scene involving a bathtub that should be disturbing, but instead it feels like something out of a nursing home-themed episode of Twin Peaks — if Twin Peaks had no music, no pacing, and no David Lynch.
Pacing: Time Slows to a Crawl
Watching this movie is like being stuck in an elevator with two people discussing their colonoscopies in real time. It moves at the speed of spilled oatmeal, and the flashbacks only make things worse, cutting in and out with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer wrapped in lace.
Every time you think it might pick up, another extended scene drags across the screen like a dying cat in a Victorian melodrama.
Dark Humor Highlights (Because We Deserve to Laugh)
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The opening scene is a kidnapping… involving an old man in a wheelchair… to the sounds of melancholy piano. It’s like Misery if everyone involved forgot their lines and their blood pressure meds.
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Rose forces Patrick to watch old home videos of her younger self. You can practically hear Patrick thinking, “Just kill me already.”
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The climactic emotional confrontation is less war of souls and more bitter brunch with bad lighting.
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The set design screams “haunted bed-and-breakfast” — or maybe “creepy doll enthusiast.” Either way, not a great place for emotional healing.
Missed Opportunities: A Better Movie Somewhere Inside
There’s almost something here — the idea of a woman reclaiming her power from a man who wronged her, set against a Southern backdrop of repressed rage and lace curtains. But Mrs. Munck fumbles it. The dialogue is too stiff, the pacing too slow, and the direction too unsure of itself.
If Ladd had handed this story to someone like Jane Campion or even the Coen Brothers, it might’ve been sharp, brutal, and devastating. Instead, it’s like reading a revenge letter that was never sent — messy, overwritten, and emotionally exhausting.
Final Verdict: A Revenge Story That Can’t Find the Spark
Mrs. Munck wants to be a poetic reckoning, but it ends up as an awkward slideshow of resentment and overripe symbolism. Even with two seasoned actors at the helm, the movie drifts listlessly, like a funeral procession that took a wrong turn into community theater.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Doilies of Doom
(One star for Diane Ladd’s effort, half a star for Bruce Dern not walking off set.)
