There are plenty of horror films on offer at the AFM this year but Went Up the Hill, the second film from New Zealand director Samuel Van Grinsven offers a very different take on the genre, using a story of haunting and possession to probe much deeper emotional terrain.
Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery and Vicky Krieps (Old, Phantom Thread) play the titular Jack and Jill, two strangers connected through their troubled relationship to Elizabeth — the mother who abandoned Jack and was Jill’s domineering and lover. The pair meet at a wake after Elizabeth’s suicide. Jill asks Jack to stay. That night, Elizabeth’s ghost possesses Jill to speak to Jack. Later the process is reversed: Elizabeth possesses her son Jack to interact with her former lover. “It’s a three-hander played by two people, with two people playing the same person,” says Montgomery.
We’re not in Exorcist territory here. Krieps and Montgomery deliver spectacularly understated performances with no spooky voices or OTT violence and only subtle cues to indicate the shift. Krieps, playing Jill possessed by Elizabeth, gets slighter colder, more rigid, and more awkward. Montgomery as Elizabeth speaking through Jack, is softer, more gentle, but also sterner.
The approach transforms what could have been sensationalist schlock into a nuanced study of trauma and grief and the emotional hold the dead still exert on the living. “I had just lost someone and when I read the script, I thought: ‘Wow this is so true,’ said Krieps, speaking at the film’s world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. “Even if it isn’t a toxic person like Elizabeth, we are possessed by our past lives, our past relationships. The dead don’t go away. Emotionally, they continue to haunt us.”
Montgomery and Krieps wore separate scents for Jack, Jill and Elizabeth, to provide a sensory trigger to switch between performances. “It was something we both came up with independent of one another, which made it feel like fate,” says Montgomery. “Using the perfumes made for a different sensory experience on set, the smell became a triggering moment, a physical cue to trigger memories in your body. It was much more intense than I expected.”
As the story gradually reveals the toxic dynamics of Elizabeth’s life — her abandonment of Jack, her abuse (physical, emotional and sexual) of Jill, Went Up the Hill dives deep down the emotional well, and closer to true horror territory. There is a deeply uncomfortable, not-quite-incestuous sexual encounter when Elizabeth possesses Jack to force herself on her ex-wife. The fact that Jack is also gay makes the scene even more complicated and emotionally confusing.
But Van Grinsven, who first gained critical attention with his 2019 student film Sequin in a Blue Room, demonstrates remarkable directorial control, handling even the most garish and outlandish elements of the story with deftly artistry.
The film’s eeriness emerges not from traditional horror tropes —though there is a single, highly-effective jump scare in the final reel — but through technical panache, and top below-the-line credits including Robert Mackenzie’s ambiguous sound design, Tyson Perkins’ disorienting cinematography, and Sherree Philips’ minimalist production design. Hanan Townshend’s score, with its heavy, rhythmic breathing and ethereal tones, cultivates a constant atmosphere of unease.
The single most effective special effect is the color-stripped, bleakly atmospheric backdrop of rural New Zealand. The result is one of the most startlingly original ghost stories in years, a scary movie less about supernatural terror and more about the horror of the emotional hauntings we all carry.
Bankside Films is selling Went Up the Hill internationally, co-repping North American sales rights with CAA Media Finance.
