“Just take a deep breath and do your thing.”
This coming of age movie explores the value of long-lasting friendships. The audience is taken on a journey of teenage boy drama, rebelling against parents, well set up traps and hard core mystery solving.
]Nancy Drew and The Hidden Staircase is about Nancy who recently moved to Twin Lakes from Chicago with her dad after the tragic death of her mother. While staying in this small town, Nancy gets into a lot of trouble with the Fuzz due to committing various acts of felony. Such as replacing water with blue dye in the shower to get back at the popular guy in school for cyberbullying Nancy’s friend.
Nancy holds a tight-knit group of friends who can be considered her clique, but she tends to still rebel to get of Twin Lake and back to Chicago. She does this by using her sharp eye, keen sense of observation and attention to detail to do what she considers to be good for the town.
The film introduces eccentric characters, like Flora who has a grand house with pink flamingos in the garden. However, in spite of the cheerful exterior, Flora experiences frequent episodes of supernatural hauntings. Flora calls it ‘just another Saturday night.’ Of course, Nancy ditches her community service hours to team up with Helen Corning, Flora’s niece, to solve the mystery. Helen Corning is the trio’s enemy but Nancy works with her to uncover the mystery in Flora’s home.
After experiencing the hauntings for herself, Nancy uses her skills to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on. Nancy discovers a hidden staircase that explains the reason for the supernatural occurrences at Flora’s home. Yet, this doesn’t explain who is manipulating the props set up in the room behind the wall to orchestrate the hauntings. As the suspense is being built, Nancy is preoccupied with solving another mystery. A mystery that is a lot more important for her…
Nancy perseveres and through her dedication and willingness to do anything to save those she cares about she saves the day. The film is nostalgic as it has elements of a Home Alone movie, setting up traps to capture the bad guys while the parents are away. In this case, Carson was cuffed to a chair. Just the minor details.
Overall, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase truly showed us the complicated layers of teenagehood. Where Nancy deals with the loss of her mother, adjusting to a new town, making new friends, standing up to the bully all while solving mysteries. The friendship that blossomed between the three girls and Helen was as heartwarming as it is relatable. We have all been through that type of loss in need of a long-lasting bond, at some point in our lives.
Even though the film adaptation of the Nancy Drew book was seemingly different it evoked the same feelings and thrill that the books were known and loved for.
Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase is out in theatres now.