Crossword review

By Terry Sherwood

Crossword is a at times brilliant psychological thriller that demands full attention, not because of narrative but because of the precision with which director-star Michael Vlamis arranges the emotional, symbolic, and structural elements of the film. At its core, Crossword examines a young couple James a one-time world-class swimmer and suddenly in demand author Tessa whose lives have been shattered by the drowning death of their daughter, Lily.   The device of a daily crossword puzzle that serves as both the protagonist’s mental refuge and the trigger for his collapse.

 Tessa has channeled her mourning outward, converting loss into artistic creation with Lily Learns How to Swim, a children’s book that becomes the object of outside admiration. James, meanwhile, is in alcohol and guilt phase. Crossword puzzles, which once represented order and comfort in fact he even proposed to Tessa through a crossword, is a source of comfort that suddenly changes 

 Michael Vlamis the role of James is emotionally ruined man clawing for sense. He comes off as being raw, physical, and volatile tears, sweat, snot, and panic fused into a portrait of someone who recognizes his unraveling yet cannot halt it. In other words, the classic addict caught in the spiral downward.  The film’s early scenes give up blatant clues like reading the Hopper Print Nighthawks already hanging in the couple’s home; a reference to Brandon Lee’s last movie answered by The Crow just as a crow crash into the glass door. The moments are engineered to feel either meaningful or psychologically projected.  Tessa suggests synchronicity; James perceives threat from everyone and even the point of having ‘bugged house”. The audience is caught between those readings, mirroring James’s unstable subjectivity.

These coincidences escalate into a pattern that begins to revolve an explanation around Lily’s death. As James fills out a new crossword, every answer seems to refer to drowning, memory, failure, and guilt. Crosswords are less about a haunted puzzle than a haunted mind. The puzzle becomes a surface upon which James imposes meaning, a demonstration of how grief can become interpretive compulsion. 

Tessa, played with layered restraint by Aurora Perrineau, embodies a different trajectory of mourning. Where James collapses inward, Tessa flees outward, taking long runs, engaging in interviews, and burying herself in her book’s success. Perrineau’s performance avoids the trope of the saintly suffering spouse; she oscillates between compassion, exhaustion, and avoidance, all of which ring true. Their dynamic resembles Hopper’s Nighthawks: a couple in the same frame but occupying emotional distances that feel insurmountable that become silences.

Besides the two leads you have Harvey Guillén’s Terry, featured writer for Profile magazine pressing Tessa for vulnerability with some soft-spoken pressure, pushing her toward emotional exposure she is unwilling to give. He goes too far and the pivotal interview ends with his exciting hastily with remarks that it can be done over the phone.  

Nick Thune as Dave the party guest by contrast, is designed to be abrasively antagonistic, becoming a catalyst for one of James’s public breakdowns. Their presence underscores an important structural point: James’s spiraling paranoia does not exist in a vacuum. He reacts not only to grief but to an environment filled with imperfect, sometimes antagonistic, personalities—a realism that complicates easy moral judgment.

Symbolism permeates nearly every corner of the film, all be it pretty blatant The lily bed in the couple’s yard, tended with obsessive care yet refusing to bloom until the climax, is an emblem of suspended mourning. The crow, a classic omen of death along with the Hopper print that is a classic of isolation.  The crosswords themselves represent the irresistible human urge to impose order on 

As a film Crossword is tightly constructed and visually assured, though not without minor narrative quibbles. Some viewers may detect timeline inconsistencies or transitions that feel abrupt. The clues sometimes give the impression that they should have a huge neon arrow pointing to them, Yet these structural imperfections do little to diminish the film’s emotional force. One wonders at a critical moment when the epiphany happens that suddenly appears in perhaps something that should be noticed before. 

Crossword screened as part of Soho Horror Fest 2025.