The movies have masterfully exploited viewers’ terror of heights, bats, rats, sharks, spiders and snakes over the years, and for anyone whose greatest fear is growing old and lapsing into frightened confusion, “The Father” will be their “Jaws.”
Not that first-time director Florian Zeller (co-adapting his own play with Christopher Hampton) is making a ghoulish or garish horror show out of a difficult and sensitive subject, far from it. But as Anthony Hopkins masterfully portrays a man slipping further and further into dementia, the film captures the terrifying sensation of not remembering and not understanding the people and places around us, and the helplessness of having to have your reality explained to you.