‘My Cousin Rachel’ on HBO: Rachel Weisz Owns This Black-Widow Period Mystery

The first hint you get that My Cousin Rachel will be a good bit better than your average sleepy costume drama is that it’s based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. The 20th Century English author wrote the stories that were adapted into movies like Rebecca, Don’t Look Now, and The Birds. The darkness in du Maurier’s novels made her a perfect for filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Nicolas Roeg.

South African director Roger Michell doesn’t have the reputation of those directors, but one look at his filmography reveals a deceptively deep and interesting filmmaker: the Julia Roberts romantic comedy Notting Hill in 1999, the social-commentary thriller Changing Lanes in 2002, the underrated and deeply unsettling Enduring Love in 2004, the near-miss Rachel McAdams/Harrison Ford comedy Morning Glory in 2010; the massively underrated marriage dramedy Le Week-End in 2013. He doesn’t always deliver a success (the Bill Murray-starring FDR biopic Hyde Park on Hudson laid an egg), but more often than not, his films are up to more than they seem on the surface.

So, too, is My Cousin Rachel, which initially presents itself as one of those English dynastic dramas you’ve seen before. Someone dies, an estate in Cornwall is left in question, a widow and an heir are at odds, and nobody seems overly concerned by cousins coupling in the slightest. Sam Claflin, best known for his role as Finnick Odair in the Hunger Games movies, plays Philip, who was orphaned at a young age, taken in by his kind older cousin Ambrose, and grew to see Ambrose as a father. But Ambrose leaves Cornwall for Florence, sends correspondence that he and his widowed cousin Rachel have gotten hitched, and before Philip can even process the developments, gets sick and dies. In some of Ambrose’s later correspondence, he claims Rachel is mistreating him. But is this evidence of foul play, or the manifest symptoms of Ambrose’s brain disease making him paranoid and delusional? The answers come after Rachel appears in Cornwall and begins circling Philip, who will inherit the estate come his next birthday.

In Michell’s hands and especially with Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz in the title role, My Cousin Rachel reveals hidden depths. The ever-evolving relationship between Rachel and Philip never seems to be balanced the same way for very long. The upper hand shifts, as do loyalties; the sexual attraction between them is palpable, even as the audience is squirming in their seats because they know someone is making a terrible decision here. Rachel’s assumed villainy is inextricable from her identity as an unmarried woman at a time when such women became social outcasts if they were alone for too long, and both Weisz and Michell play this note for the audience’s benefit in a way that gets their loyalties shifting too. It’s a clever bit of showmanship in a genre that doesn’t always feature it.

If you’re the type to dismiss period dramas like this one, allow yourself to linger on My Cousin Rachel, however briefly. Weisz is utterly bewitching onscreen, and there’s always a little bit more going on than you expect in the story. It’s an unexpected thrill.

Where to stream My Cousin Rachel