REVIEW: The Beguiled (2017) replaces melodrama with subtle, sultry power play

We open on black, as we know all important films must.

When we fade in, it’s on a little girl in a checked skirt, wandering beneath the hanging moss of a long dark tunnel of oak trees. When she gently picks mushrooms from the dirt, we can almost hear their stalks part; so quiet and eerie is the locale.…