Film Review: The Tutor

The Tutor is the kind of film that wastes absolutely no time to get to the good stuff. Within the opening minutes, we’re introduced to Ethan (Garrett Hedlund), a very in-demand tutor who has to raise as much money as he can now that he has a baby on the way with his girlfriend, Annie (Victoria Justice). His luck turns when he gets a nice, high paying gig to tutor a child from a very wealthy family, Jackson (Noah Schnapp). But it doesn’t take long at all before Ethan starts to notice some very strange behavior from the boy, who soon starts to look more obsessive.

From bizarre off-hand comments, mysterious things about his family, who seemingly aren’t around all that much, to Ethan finding a literal laptop with pictures of him and Annie hidden tucked away in a folder, Jackson’s obsession becomes a major source of stress. And that stress goes double for him considering Annie doesn’t take his various worries and concerns particularly seriously, and Jackson escalates things even further when he manages to set up certain situations to make Ethan look bad, sending him down a paranoid spiral.

So, this is a narrative we’ve seen plenty of times before. It’s very much classic stalker thriller material, and it plays out quite fast and also quite broad, not only in the writing within Ryan King’s script, but also in the performances. Schapp plays Jackson like the evil twin of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, he’s awkward, stilted, says strange things, and assumes a level of familiarity with Ethan that Ethan does not reciprocate in any way shape or form. It often borders on amusing, if I’m being totally honest, as I watch things escalate to wild degrees over the course of the film.

But as much as I sometimes found the film more funny than thrilling, I was nevertheless compelled by it. And to be fair to the film, it isn’t a pure genre exercise and repeat of old, tired tropes. It does have a twist to the formula. The big problem is that the twist is is only effective for a first viewing experience. The twist doesn’t inform previous scenes all that much because it was otherwise so committed to a singular point-of-view that the new context doesn’t offer anything to observe besides, “oh, so this is what was actually going on.” It’s a twist for the sake of a twist, and it would have been more effective if it was revealed and explored with a bit more depth earlier in the film.

Despite its issues, The Tutor really flies by, and while I would call it a particularly good movie as a whole, it is very watchable and it is by all means never boring. Garrett Hedlund brings the right amount of frustration and paranoia to the performance, it’s very easy to get invested in his journey, and everyone is seemingly on board with the slightly over-the-top tone that director, Jordan Ross, appears to be going for. It’s competently put together, the film has a decent flow to things, and it moves through each beat with plenty of impact. It’s the kind of movie that I can imagine a packed crowd watching, and just constantly screaming at the characters, and I mean that in a complimentary way. Watching this on a laptop at home with a screener just doesn’t hit the same way. I just wish it was more committed to the can of worms opened up by the big reveal, since it hints at a much more interesting overall story than the one we got.

The Tutor is now out in select theaters.