The Restoration At Grayson Manor

Sometimes a damaging system operates on such a grand scale, and is so inherently absurd, that it’s difficult to address it without sounding like a conspiracy theory obsessive. The class system still operational across much of Europe and successfully imported to parts of the New World is one such phenomenon, and narratives exploring it are further complicated by the fact that, understandably, nobody has much sympathy for the rich. Nevertheless, like other forms of hierarchy, this is a system which constrains everybody. in The Restoration At Grayson Manor, which screened as part of Fantastic Fest 2025, director/co-writer Glenn McQuaid uses larger than life cinematic tropes as a means of getting at his subject effectively.

Boyd Grayson (Chris Colfer) is a rebel – a rather spoiled one, perhaps, as he will never have to worry about going hungry, being homeless, getting in trouble with the law or the countless other things that bother the little people. Nevertheless, his concerns are serious ones. He’s a queer man who wants to live life on his own terms, but the circumstances of his birth mean that he’s under considerable pressure to marry and produce an heir. One day, when he and his mother are engaged in one of many furious arguments about it, a freak accident occurs, and in the process of pushing her to safety, he loses both his hands.

The mother, Jacqueline (Alice Krige), is tortured by her fear that Boyd will not fulfil his duty and that, as a consequence, she will have failed to fulfil hers. The severity with which she styles herself and her absolute identification with that duty makes one wonder what traumas she may have experienced in the past. naturally, she doesn’t want Boyd’s disability to get in the way, so she hires Dr. Tannock (Daniel Adegboyega), a scientist undertaking cutting edge work, who develops a pair of robotic hands which Boyd will gradually learn to control using thought impulses. The trouble is that they can be operated remotely and, in keeping with the traditions of the killer hands film subgenre, they come to life when he is dreaming, acting out his most base impulses.

Boyd is convinced that his glamorous seventysomething mother is sleeping with the doctor. She also moves a young woman (Gabriela Garcia Vargas) into the house, a South American who engages in unfamiliar ritual practices and whom he refers to with typical unkindness as “that toad-licking bruja”. The impact of her concoctions is to distort the already strange narrative by adding hallucinations, alongside those dreams, into the mix, so that we’re never fully certain of what’s real. Boyd takes refuge in the arms of kindly nurse Lee (Declan Reynolds), who provides him with the relief that a man without hands needs, but may not be ready for the level of attachment that the lonely young man develops to him.

Nobody here is ultimately very likeable, but everyone is sympathetic; they’re a collection of messed-up, destructive people trapped within a destructive system. That McQuaid appreciates the absurdity of all this is clearly established in the opening scene, when Boyd and Jacqueline’s melodramatic exchanges take place in front of a stranger Boyd has brought home, who stands there in his pants looking awkward and trying to figure out how to make a polite exit. By the end, however, you’ll be so immersed in the world of the manor that you will almost be willing to accept its logic yourself.

This type of drama has traditionally produced great characters for women, and Krige has a whale of a time as the mistreated, magnificent and sometimes monstrous Jacqueline. Neither her scheming nor her bursts of fury can fully obfuscate her love for her son, and one gets the impression that his own tenacity secretly fills her with pride. They are well matched adversaries, thrilling to watch, but woe betide the poor little people who get in their way.

The sort of film we rarely see these days, this is self-indulgent, alienating and a pleasure from start to finish.

Reviewed on: 04 Oct 2025