Review: 'Separation' is effective as a horror movie, and as a drama about divorce and death through a little girl's eyes

As a horror movie, director William Brent Bell’s “Separation” is an effective dispenser of creepy atmosphere and unsettling shocks — but as an allegory for the emotional trauma of divorce and grief, it’s got a little more going on upstairs than the average gorefest.

The Vahns, from the outside, would seem to have a perfect family. Mom, Maggie (Mamie Gummer), works in her father’s law firm, while the dad, Jeff (Rupert Friend), works from home as a comic-book artist and watches their 8-year-old daughter, Jenny (Violet McGraw). 

But from within, there are tensions. Jenny hears them at night when her parents argue. Maggie is angry at Jeff for not growing up and getting a real job, and spending more time talking about art with Jenny’s babysitter, Samantha (Madeline Brewer), than keeping Jenny from playing in the attic of their Brooklyn brownstone.

Maggie and Jeff are on the verge of divorce, with Maggie’s dad, Paul (Brian Cox, owning every scene he’s in), backing up his daughter’s desire for sole custody of Jenny. Then Maggie is suddenly killed, run over by an SUV. Jeff tries to help Jenny grieve her mother’s death, though he’s also dealing with that emotional weight — as well as finding a job at a comics publisher, run by an old pal (Eric T. Miller), so he can keep Paul from continuing his fight for custody of Jenny.

Jenny, for her part, takes comfort in her toys — many of them based on the creepy, Tim Burton-esque characters from the comic Jeff and Maggie created before Jenny was born. But there’s something about those characters that’s different now, as if they have minds and vengeful agendas of their own.

Bell — whose last credits were the spooky doll movie “The Boy” and its sequel, “Brahms: The Boy II” — knows how to pull dread out of the air, and he orchestrates the oppressive atmosphere and the periodic scares with masterful precision. He also is smart about how he presents the themes in the script, by first-time feature writers Nick Amadeus and Josh Braun, of divorce and death seen through a child’s eyes. The result is a scary movie that’s also a thoughtful one.

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‘Separation’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 30, in theaters where open. Rated R for language, some violence, and brief drug use. Running time: 107 minutes.