Another Origin for Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase (2019) Movie Review
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| Photo by Donny Jiang on Unsplash |
As you may or may not know, Nancy Drew is still a popular heroine today. People continue to rewrite her story and modernize it to appeal to a new audience. However, those of us who have read the classic yellow hardback series know how Nancy and her origin was more or less written (several of the original stories from the 30s were rewritten a few times over the decades, so the yellow hardbacks we have today are not 100% original).
I am an avid Nancy Drew fan and reviewed the 2002 Disney movie of Nancy Drew where she's in college. This new 2019 iteration of the sleuth has Nancy hanging out with her friends Bess and George in one of the lower high school levels. We learn early on that Nancy used to see them only during summers.
NOTE: This post contains spoilers for this movie (obvi) and HeR Interactive's games The Ghost of Thornton Hall and Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake.
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| Opening credits still from Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase |
Synopsis
Nancy Drew and her father, Carson, move from Chicago to the little town of River Heights, their former summer vacation spot. They moved because Nancy's mother passed away within the last few years and Carson couldn't bear staying in a city that reminded him so much of her. Nancy was not entirely happy about his decision, but they now live with her aunt and Carson's sister, Hannah.
Nancy hangs out with her best friends, Bess and George, and helps them get back at a bully, which gets Nancy in trouble with the police. While she's doing community service, Nancy overhears that popular girl Helen Corning's aunt has been experiencing hauntings in her house, but the police won't offer much help. Nancy takes the case and teams up with Helen to solve the mystery.
Meanwhile, the people of River Heights are divided on whether or not a train should be installed in the town. Hannah is fighting for it to modernize the town, while Carson is working with Nate, his friend and Nancy's godfather, to prevent the train from happening in order to protect the city's historical charm.
Nancy is warned/threatened by Willie Wharton, a thug, that her father should allow the train to be installed in the town so powerful people won't lose their money.
General Nancy Drew Lore
Here are various elements I noticed that match the classic Nancy Drew lore:
The opening credits pay homage to the classic yellow hardbacks where the writing is in blue with yellow highlighting.
Nancy has her signature look of titian hair and instead of her blue roadster or blue convertible, her skater's helmet is blue, which indicates she's not old enough to learn how to drive.
When Nancy learns of some injustice that has been done, she dives in to right the scales. This Nancy still has that fire within her. Nancy is still very much intrigued by mysteries.
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| The movie version of Twin Elms |
Changed Lore
Time
There can be no doubt about the time we're in. The girls have touchscreen cell phones (smartphones?) and during a conversation, Bess emotes having her mind blown like the emoji. Some modern lingo is used, such as "hard pass," "bae," and "blow up your phone." (Note: The licence plate with the word, "Winning." This term went viral in 2011 and came to mean, in this sense, "one [who] is "winning" will do as [they please] regardless of what others have to say. When one is "winning" there is no bringing [them] down therefore haters are rendered powerless"). I imagine that people will one day cringe at watching this movie as I did when I watched The Wonderful World of Walt Disney: Nancy Drew (aka the 2002 Nancy Drew)
Place
Nancy spends only summers in River Heights instead of being a local. Carson mentions that they moved out of Chicago, which is where some theories place the original River Heights.
Characters
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| Nancy played by Sophia Lillis |
Nancy Drew
This is a Nancy we've never seen. She is a skater girl with ripped skinny jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and titian hair that's cut the shortest yet, compared to past versions. Nancy has a 90s look, but it's tailor to the 2010s (bordering on the 2020s). Computer game Nancy is reputed to wear old-school fashion but is able to pull it off, according to Yumi in Shadow at the Water's Edge. She is very much a girl of her era. As we watch her maneuver her long board in the opening scene, I think that we're meant to think that she is an adrenaline junkie and that's why she likes solving mysteries in this universe.
Nancy may still have that fire to right the scales of justice, but she also uses that fire to seek out revenge ("restorative justice" is what Nancy calls it), such as when Derek makes a mean video about Bess's hygiene. Nancy shows her age by seeking justice in wrong ways like injecting time releasing dye into a public gym's shower head to turn one boy blue and resulting in the gym having to spends thousands of dollars in retiling (possibly).
Nancy does community service whereas she'd do volunteer work in the classic version. Once the danger of being run over and threatened has passed, Nancy is excited about there being drama in this boring town. And she smiles and makes jokes to lighten the mood a lot, giving the impression that almost everything is a joke to her.
While investigating, Nancy mentions having forgotten her flashlight, but she later has a lock-picking kit. In various versions, including the original, Nancy carries her flashlight with her, however, I think she may have a lockpicking kit only in the HeR Interactive games. In other instances, she uses other tools to break and enter or the door happens to be unlocked.
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| Hannah played by Andrea Anders |
Hannah and Carson
Hannah and Carson are brother and sister, unlike in all other versions that included those characters. Hannah was the Drews' housekeeper and mother figure to Nancy. Aunt Eloise, Carson's sister in the other versions, lived in New York and now, that's been given to Hannah (the HeR Interactive games have Aunt Eloise living in Florida, but she rents her New York apartment to an actress, so Aunt Eloise did live in New York at one point in that universe). Hannah, however, still makes food, as we see her pie stand at the Slice of Life Festival. She even has aprons with her name on it. We learn that Hannah was trying to start a stand-up comedy career back in the Big Apple. Hannah also has Book Nancy's blue convertible.
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| Carson played by Sam Trammell |
Carson recently lost his wife and moved to River Heights. Nancy's mother originally died when Nancy was under the age of 10 (it was changed in the rewrites from age 3 to 5, I believe) and in the HeR games, Nancy was 10 when she lost her mom. Nancy's mom still has her original name, Katherine.
In the classic yellow hardbacks, Carson would sometimes be involved in Nancy's cases and was even kidnapped a few times. I like that they brought that back in this movie since he doesn't show up in too many other on-screen versions and when he does, he's usually just there to talk to Nancy about the case, their own relationship stuff, etc., such as in the 2002 Disney version and the 1970s version.
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| George played by Zoe Renee |
George Fayne
George is also a girl of her time with short shorts, sporty shirt, converse shoes and a cellphone in her back pocket. Much like the original George, she has the look of an athlete. Both she and Nancy are shown to have something in common: They like to be physically active. I'm happy that George doesn't look the same as she was originally conceived. It's nice to see that this retelling embraces people from other cultures and ethnicities. Unfortunately, the movie could have gone a little further since I don't recall seeing any Asians or other cultures. The sheriff (not named Captain Rossland like in the book) is the only other black character.
Much like George in the HeR games, she is the tech-savvy one of the group. When the girls are setting up their "restorative justice" scheme on Derek, George is on her laptop and hacking into the gym's camera system and it looked like she even had to do some coding.
In the chem lab, we see another side of George that shows why she's friends with Nancy. She shares Nancy's drive for justice and stands up to Helen, trying to make her take some responsibility for not stopping Derek from bullying Bess.
Like in CW's Nancy Drew series, Bess and George are not cousins, just friends. We never learn how they met or how they both met Nancy.
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| Bess played by Mackenzie Graham |
Bess Marvin
While George and Nancy match their original version's hair colors, Bess is a brunette instead of blond. I think that they may be trying to show that the characters don't necessarily need to look like their original version. To add to that, I'm happy that Bess is different from her original version. Bess being intellectually smart for a change reminds me of how Daphne from Scooby-Doo was improved in Be Cool, Scooby-Doo. It also adds to how HeR Interactive has been trying to get girls interested in STEM with their Codes & Clues game. The opening song "More than Just a Girl" could be solely for Nancy, but I find it relates to Bess, George and Helen as well since they develop their friendships and grow together.
Bess is still concerned with her appearance, as many high school girls are, which matches the Bess we've seen since the 1930s. Thankfully, society is working on reducing its fat-shaming as we see in the yellow hardbacks. George was not always a nice cousin back then. Her 2019 version tells Bess, who worries about her skin and stops herself from having a treat, "Eat a doughnut, Bess, okay? Life is short."
I love that Bess is the one to suggest that the group were drugged. She even lists carbon monoxide but then recants that possibility saying that Nancy, Helen and Aunt Flora would be ghosts, too, then. But that's not true according to The Ghost of Thornton Hall where Nancy and the house's habitants hallucinate, get headaches and feel sick because of carbon monoxide poisoning.
We get a brief look at the classic girly Bess when she dresses up to check out the source of the nutmeg used as a hallucinogenic. This scene shows that it's 2019 where George fixes Bess's posture so she looks confident and compliments her by saying she looks "dangerous." Not "pretty," or "beautiful" or some other superficial adjective. "Dangerous." George adds to that by saying something like, "I feel empowered just standing next to you."
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| Helen played by Laura Wiggins |
Helen Corning
Helen is the stereotypical rich, mean girl who tries to bully Bess and her friends with mean remarks. As a nod to the classic books, Helen says about Bess, "In a different world, we'd be friends." Helen has Bess's attitude, especially from The Shattered Medallion where Bess feels like a failure in what she's normally good at (flirting) and can't think of any skills that she has. In the car, Helen marvels at Nancy, Bess and George's skills, thinking she has only nice hair and a boyfriend.
As a whole, the girls seem to be the youngest we've had on the screen (14? 15?). However, they may be the same age as Bonita Granville's Nancy in the 1930s, but I watched those three films many years ago and don't remember much except that it wasn't faithful to the books and portrayed Nancy and Ned as too over-the-top and slap-sticky.
Ned Nickerson
There is no Ned in this universe, which correlates to the classic books' chronology (he shows up in Book 7: The Clue in the Diary, although in the rewrites, someone made a mistake and mentioned Ned in Book 5 when Nancy hasn't met him yet). It's odd, though, since Bess and George aren't in the book, so why not have Ned in the movie, too? Deputy Patrick could have been Ned since he's got short dark hair and a kind heart (But I learned that Patrick is a character in the book, so that explains his presence in the movie). Ned, once again, gets the short end of the stick like in every other version aside from some of the original books. We get character models for Bess and George in the HeR Interactive games, but no model for Ned yet (after 33 games!).
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| The hidden staircase (edited to remove some of the darkness) |
The Letdown
The movie's title is Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, based on the second book in the classic yellow collection. The book cover shows Nancy in a suspenseful scene of shining her flashlight up a hidden staircase in a dark, cobwebby tunnel as she stares up in the unknown. Even the CW TV series (also in 2019) made up a cover with their actress that resembled and paid homage to the classic cover.
This scene is never in the movie. When Helen and Nancy enter the house via the secret tunnel, they go DOWN the staircase and it's nothing special. The camera angles don't even try to make the scene look at all similar. This is a big deal since it's THE MOVIE TITLE. It also has its own chapter in the book! There should have been some sort of hesitancy, some sort of emphasis that this is the hidden staircase.
We never learn why that part of the house was sealed off. There's an entire room with furniture, like a table and chairs. I would imagine it was a servants' area, but nothing is said. The book states that Mr. Turnball, an ancestor of Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary, would entertain government types and have to hide them. And the staircases that connect to the Riverside Manor were used in times of bad weather to get from one place to the other. Servants and family members both used them (174).
In the movie, I find George was stuck as a minor character, meaning they put Bess and Helen more in the spotlight, but I feel like it took away from George. She's the one who's always supporting Bess in scenes. It's always George calling Nancy. She supports her friends, but doesn't have any scenes where she's supported. Consequently, Nancy, Bess and Helen's characters have an arc, but George is unchanged by the end.
Goof
It's rare that I find goofs, especially on my first watch, but there's a blatant one at the end when Nancy, Aunt Flora, and Helen are standing on the porch and watching Nate scream and hallucinate. We get a close-up of Nancy and see Carson exit the house behind her. We switch to seeing the chief arrive in his car. We switch back to the porch and see Carson emerge from the house a second time. Oddly, IMDB currently doesn't list this in its "Goofs" section.
The Hidden Staircase Book
I will analyze in quite a lot of detail what happened in the yellow hardback version of The Hidden Staircase and compare it to the movie. However, you can also listen to Karen and Kelly discuss the book in this entertaining podcast episode, Episode 3: Nancy Drew & the Sheet of Ghosts. I will include some parts of the book that didn't make it into the movie.
Note that my copy is a 2002 printing of the 1987 version of the book.
Nancy is outside gardening when Helen calls her to ask her to investigate her aunt's haunted house. But while there are hauntings, there was also a burglary. Helen's aunt is named Rosemary and her aunt's mother is named (Miss) Flora. As you can see, the movie had to ease viewers into Nancy's re-imagined world since the four girls have been modernized and altered. Also, the movie did this for new viewers who don't know Nancy. Once we see Nancy, Bess and George's backgrounds and characters, then we're presented with the main issue: Twin Elms and its hauntings.
Twin Elms in the book is in Cliffwood, but I'm not sure if that's a separate town from River Heights or if it's a neighborhood within River Heights. We don't really know how large River Heights is.
Note: This book specifies that Nancy is a "blond-haired"(2) detective, which I briefly discuss in this post on red-headed heroines.
As soon as Nancy is introduced to Helen's mystery, Nathan Gomber (who is replaced by Nate in the movie and not related to Nancy) comes calling at Nancy's house to warn her that her father is in danger because the work her father did for the railroad is in a mess. Gomber says the homeowners who sold their property for the railroad's future bridge believe they were cheated in the sale. And one of the homeowners, Willie Wharton, claims the deed and his signature on the contract of sale were falsified. Gomber is acting as Wharton and the homeowners' agent and responsible for hiding Wharton until the railroad company decides to pay a higher amount. So, while the movie has Twin Elms as the potentially first home to sell to Nate for the train, the book has properties other than Twin Elms already sold when it's brought to Nancy's attention. No one is against the railroad.
FUN FACT: In the Secrets Can Kill REMASTERED computer game, you can spot the name "Nathan Gomber" written in the security report Nancy can print out.
The book and movie are set in the same area, that is, near Chicago, in River Heights (Book Nancy is sometimes in River Heights, but mostly in Cliffwood). Book Carson mentions that the railroad bought land on both sides of the Muskoka River (14), but there doesn't seem to be such a river in the real United States (only in Canada).
Book Helen and Nancy do team-up to stay at Twin Elms to figure out what's happening as they do in the movie. At the same time, we learn that Book Helen just got engaged (to Jim Archer, who appears in Secret of the Old Clock computer game with some changes to his character). Derek doesn't exist in the book unless he's meant to be a version of Nancy's date Dirk Jackson?).
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| Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash |
Readers of the classic novels will know that the writing is not terribly detailed. The prose is kept tight, so readers get the bare facts without dragging the story. While Aunt Flora in the movie tells Nancy and Helen that she was a burlesque dancer and has met various celebrities, we see that Aunt Flora has eclectic tastes in décor. In contrast, we're given a limited idea about Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary since the house has "lovely damask draperies, satin-covered sofas and chairs, and on the walls, family portraits in large gilt frames of scrollwork design," (26). We're not given any idea about Aunt Rosemary's style or personality when she's introduced; all we're told is that she's tall and slender with greying hair (6). Miss Flora is described as looking similar to her daughter with the same gentle smile, but with white hair (26-27). Readers must create the characters in their own minds, kind of how Joe Hardy does it in The Deadly Device when Nancy talks about her suspects without giving any descriptions and Joe mentions adjusting his mental image of Ryan when he learns Ryan is female.
When Book Nancy and Helen arrive at Twin Elms, they learn that another burglary may have taken place. There is some speculation that Miss Flora may be going senile. They explore some of the inside and outside, and you know, actually make an effort. Nancy and Helen don't do this in the movie. We see them arrive and they simply wait for the hauntings that happen at the same time every evening. Since this haunting included a type of drug, Nancy is only able to look around the house the next morning where she all too easily notice a partial footprint on the floor, thanks to Aunt Flora's preferences for artificially colored grass.
The backstory of Twin Elms is different in the movie. Aunt Flora says that the Colefax (spelling?) brothers, Malcolm and Skyler, built it, but had a falling out over a woman named Millicent Andrews. She was in love with Skyler, but Malcolm had been the one to propose. Apparently, Malcolm was filled with so much jealousy and rage that he killed both of them, buried them in the walls of Twin Elms and then committed suicide, but no one found the bodies. I just realized that by the end, we don't know the truth behind these three characters once Nancy has unearthed the hidden rooms in the house. Did Malcolm commit suicide? What happened to Millicent and Skyler? In the book, Twin Elms is a mansion rather than just a house and its backstory is kept vague. While investigating, Helen explains that "Riverview Manor was a duplicate of Twin Elms mansion. The two brothers had been inseparable companions, but their sons who later lived there had had a violent quarrel and had become lifelong enemies" (32). A few pages later, we learn that Mr. Drew's case with the railroad and Nathan Gomber is linked to Nancy's case because Gomber to trying to get Miss Flora to sell Twin Elms. In the movie, we don't get any obvious sign that both are connected until near the end when Nancy watches the security footages and remembers the skull on Wharton's clothing.
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| Photo by alexey turenkov on Unsplash |
While Flora is telling Nancy about the hauntings, Helen goes to the kitchen to retrieve a pie. Helen screams because she sees a face in the window of a warthog, which Nancy realizes connects to the Colefax brothers being pig farmers. Nancy runs out to investigate, but since it's just a yard and not an estate like in the book, she immediately sees a car speeding away from the driveway and encounters Deputy Patrick on the front lawn. Helen is surprised that Nancy is so enthusiastic and brave. In the book, Helen sees a gorilla mask instead (not sure why that animal was chosen) and when Nancy goes out to search the grounds, Helen recovers and joins her, demonstrating that she is just as brave as Nancy. The duo don't find anything and return to the house where Nancy figures out how the gorilla mask trick was done without leaving any prints. When she proves how the ghost makes the chandelier move, the group try to figure out whether they have one ghost or two. The movie version shows Nancy and Helen teaming up by exploring the hidden tunnel and room as well as calling all the contractors that have worked on Aunt Flora's house where they discover that the air conditioner was tampered with.
That's something I like about the book as I compare it to the movie; the group goes to the second floor of the house instead of staying in the dining room, kitchen and main hallway all on the first floor. The hauntings also happen at all hours in the book, which lends more weight to the house being haunted, whereas the movie's hauntings is on a schedule starting in the evening, so it's obvious that it's staged like in Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake when Nancy experiences the ghost dogs attacking Sally's house while she's in it. Nancy talks to Sally and they both figure out that the attack was always at the same time and therefore, choreographed. However, both book and movie's hauntings did start only recently, so that's also a big indicator that it's all fake.
Side note: How many Nancy Drew games can I reference in this post? hahahahaha
Book Nancy gets a phone call from her father while at Twin Elms and they update each other on their cases. Carson hasn't found Wharton in Chicago, but will go visit her at Twin Elms once he's finished with some business in about a day. Because the movie is set in a more technologically advanced decade, Nancy and Carson text each other morning and night with check-ins. However, less than 24 hours after Carson calls Nancy to say he's leaving for his trip to convince a homeowner not to sell to the train company, he's MIA and Nancy is worried.
The movie removed action scenes like when Nancy and Carson go to the railway construction site and are almost hit by a truck (however, I think that it may have been replaced by the scene where Wharton tries to run down Nancy à la Biff Tannen) and when Nancy physically removes an owl from Twin Elms (and gets some peck marks) while Helen holds the screen open. After the owl incident in the middle of the night, Nancy realizes that despite having a police office patrolling the grounds, the ghost could still enter the house. Instead of Movie Nancy meeting Patrick outside Twin Elms because he was worried about Aunt Flora and didn't like how the Sheriff dismissed her worries, Nancy meets Patrick in the book because it was her idea to ask the Sheriff for police protection during the night until she figures out what's going on; Officer (Tom) Patrick is the one patrolling.
Because we had the introduction to Nancy and the type of person she is in the movie, she is sure that Derek and his father are involved in the hauntings since they have motive to get back at her and Nancy sees their car leaving Twin Elms after Helen sees the mask in the window. Nancy goes to their mansion with the intention of getting Derek to confess, but instead, breaks into their garage to find evidence on their car.
I will say one thing: While I mentioned above that Movie Nancy is portrayed as inappropriately smiling and laughing as though she takes everything as a joke, Book Nancy is somewhat like that. For instance, after Nancy encounters Officer Patrick outside, Helen points out that Nancy was reckless in going out at night with the hauntings going on, "You might have been in real danger, Nancy, not knowing who he was. You must be more careful," (65). Nancy just laughs, but we're not sure if she's confidant and dismissing Helen's fear or not willing to admit that Helen's right.
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| Nancy and Helen on the roof of Twin Elms p. 150-151 in Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #2: The Hidden Staircase book |
When Book Nancy learns from Hannah that her father sent a telegram to say he would be a day late to the mansion, Helen tries to cheer her up. They, along with Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary, go to the attic and try on the Colonial outfits and dance together. The fun is stopped when Officer Patrick catches a man on the property who turns out to be a neighbor taking a short cut home. He happens to be a notary public who helps Nancy at the end.
Book Nancy does a lot of work to trace her father's whereabouts, calling his hotel, talking to the taxi drivers at the train station and even updating the other lawyers working on the train's bridge project to ask them to help find her father. Nancy and Helen in the movie have an easier time tracking down her father since she had his information in her office and could go straight to the hotel and blackmail the manager into watching the security footage.
Book Nancy and Helen not only experience ghostly occurrences in the house, but are almost seriously hurt when they're both caught under a collapsed ceiling that Aunt Rosemary attributes to ongoing leaks that weakened the plaster. In true Nancy style, she says she's fine and no one insists that she see a doctor. In The Deadly Device, Deirdre Shannon references this while talking to Nancy on the phone, "Hey, you know, you should volunteer at one of those neurological study places because you have been knocked out a lot, my friend."
Because Miss Flora faints when she sees a grizzled stranger in her parlor, Book Nancy and Helen re-explore the room. They discover a tunnel that acts as a listening post; anyone in the tunnel can hear conversations in the kitchen because it was installed to listen in on the servants during the times of revolutions and find spies among the staff.
The car chase scene in the book should have been in the movie. Nancy is so aggravated by Nathan Gomber showing up at Twin Elms again and probably having something to do with her father's kidnapping: "With that Nancy put on speed and shot ahead [...] "I'm following Nathan Gomber until I catch him!" (136). I could just see and hear her determination and it makes you root for her. I felt the movie didn't show much of Nancy's reaction to her godfather being the culprit. I know she didn't have much time to process it, but there was no predominant emotion; it seemed she was just going through the motions of trying to capture the culprits.
Aunt Flora in the movie is coerced into signing over her property by Wharton, who is armed, but she is much more spirited than anticipated and manages to stab his hand with a pen, saying that she didn't survive this long only to be killed by him. Miss Flora in the book, however, is ill when Nathan Gomber is let into the house by an unsuspecting cleaning woman who couldn't find Aunt Rosemary. He threatens Miss Flora's loved ones and she panics, signing the contract and the cleaning woman witnesses it.
In the movie, it took me two or three tries to understand why Nate changed sides. It turns out that the train company was paying Nate to convince certain homeowners to sell their property. Nate brought in Wharton to help his scheme and scare Aunt Flora into selling, thinking the rest of the homeowners would follow suite. Nate was pretending the whole time to deceive Carson and get the money he needed to pay back massive debt. My question is, why did Nate have to pretend in the first place? Why not have him working with Hannah? Did he think he'd be Suspect #1 if the police started investigating Wharton? It just seems a bit counter-intuitive to me, especially since no one suspects Hannah of anything, least of all being in cahoots with Wharton. In the book, Wharton was happy to go along with Gomber's plan because he wanted more money, but when Nancy and Helen discover him in the secret tunnels and he learns that Gomber lied to him and he was unknowingly involved in Mr. Drew's kidnapping, Wharton wants nothing more to do with Gomber and helps Nancy by stopping the hauntings and swearing before a notary public that he did sign the contract with the train company. We're told Gomber is arrested at Riverside Manor; it's kind of a letdown that we don't get to be there when it happens. Mr. Drew is rescued from a dungeon-like cell in the passages by Nancy and the Cliffwood police. In the movie, Carson has been held hostage for, I believe, less than 24 hours (not days like in the book) and he's taken from the secret room in Twin Elms to Aunt Flora's dining room where they are both held at gunpoint. Nathan is the one who is against violence and tells Wharton not to kill anyone.
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| Introductory image in Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #2: The Hidden Staircase book |
With all those secret passages (the listening post in the parlor, two staircases that each go to two bedrooms, a staircase to the attic, a trapdoor in the roof, a tunnel leading to Riverside Manor, etc.), Twin Elms in the book gives Blackmoor Manor a run for its money!
The Secret of the Whispering Walls
While reading the book and repeatedly watching the movie, I remembered the 1970s Nancy discovering a secret passage in wood panelling at her aunt's. After a while, I found that The Secret of the Whispering Walls was, in fact, based partly on The Hidden Staircase book along with Book 6: The Secret of Red Gate Farm.
The homeowners are Nancy and Carson's aunts, Ruby and Leila (I don't think there were any other aunts in the classic books other than Eloise). From what I can tell, the idea that there are hidden passageways in the house and that the house is trying to be bought is all that was used in the episode from The Hidden Staircase book.
My Thoughts
The 2019 Nancy is still not my Nancy Drew, but it's a good enough version for this era and I appreciate the messages it puts across. It's a movie that definitely supports young girls. It was funny that the girls talked about Mystery at the Lilac Inn and even mocked the twin trope. It makes me wonder if they intend to do another film, but it's been several years, so perhaps it was just a passing comment to insinuate that the group will have more adventures.
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| Photo by Elizabeth Liebenberg |
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Happy reading and writing!
Source:
Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase. Directed by Kat Shea, performances by Sophia Lillis, Zoe Renee and Mackenzie Graham, Red 56 and A Very Good Production Inc. 2019.
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