Many horror films are offered at AFM this year but I went up the hillNew Zealand director Samuel Van Grinsven’s second film offers a very different take on the genre, using a story of haunting and possession to plumb much deeper emotional terrain.

Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery And Vicky Krieps (Old, Ghost wire) star as the titular Jack and Jill, two strangers linked by their troubled relationship with Elizabeth – the mother who abandoned Jack and was Jill’s dominatrix and lover. The two men meet at a wake after Elizabeth’s suicide. Jill asks Jack to stay. That night, Elizabeth’s ghost possesses Jill to talk to Jack. Later, the process is reversed: Elizabeth possesses her son Jack to interact with her former lover. “It’s a three-way game played by two people, with two people playing the same person,” Montgomery explains.

We are not in it Exorcist territory here. Krieps and Montgomery deliver spectacularly understated performances, with no creepy vocals or OTT violence and only subtle cues to indicate change. Krieps, playing Jill possessed by Elizabeth, becomes a little colder, stiffer and more awkward. Montgomery as Elizabeth speaking through Jack, is gentler, gentler, but also more severe.

The approach transforms what could have been sensationalism into a nuanced study of trauma and grief and the emotional hold the dead still have on the living. “I had just lost someone and when I read the script, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s so true,'” Krieps said, speaking at the press conference. world premiere of the film at the Toronto Film Festival. “Even if it’s not 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 independently of each other, which made it feel like destiny,” Montgomery says. “By using scents designed for a different sensory experience on set, smell became a trigger 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, I went up the hill delves deep into the emotional well and approaches true horror territory. There is a deeply uncomfortable, not entirely incestuous, sexual encounter when Elizabeth possesses Jack to force herself on his 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 Glitter in a blue bedroomdemonstrates remarkable mastery of direction, handling even the most garish and outlandish elements of the story with deft artistry.

The film’s strangeness emerges not from traditional horror tropes – although there is a single, very effective jump scare in the final reel – but from the technical panache and high-end credits, including the sound design ambiguous by Robert Mackenzie, the disorienting by Tyson Perkins. cinematography and minimalist production design by Sherree Philips. Hanan Townshend’s score, with its heavy, rhythmic breathing and ethereal tones, cultivates a constant atmosphere of unease.

The most effective special effect is the devoid of color and dark atmosphere of rural New Zealand. The result is one of the most surprising and original ghost stories in years, a horror film less about supernatural terror and more about the horror of the emotional hauntings we all carry.

Bankside Films sells I went up the hill internationally, co-representing North American sales rights with CAA Media Finance.