NZIFF: Went Up the Hill

An unsettling, sinister slow-burn thriller, Samuel Van Grinsven unites rising star Dacre Montgomery with Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps and New Zealand’s own Sarah Peirse for a supernatural chiller like no other.

In an icy, shadow-stricken Queenstown, the unexpected suicide of Elizabeth has left her wife Jill (Vicky Krieps) a hollowed-out shell – that is, until the mysterious arrival of Elizabeth’s long-absent son, Jack (Dacre Montgomery). He stays the night at Jill and Elizabeth’s oppressive, concrete-clad mountain abode, and it quickly becomes clear that the spirit of Elizabeth has not yet departed. Instead, she has gained the ability to possess both wife and son, utilising this ability to linger. What initially seems to be a gift from beyond, however, begins to sour when long-hidden secrets of the past begin to emerge, and lines between the two begin to be crossed.

Samuel Van Grinsven sophomore effort is a wintry, gothic affair, a showcase for the untapped talents of Stranger Things’ Montgomery. Essentially a two-hander (with welcome interjection from Sarah Peirse as Jack’s frosty, mystery-shrouded aunt), Van Grinsven tracks the trajectory of these two adrift people and the spirit between them — from unexpected refuge, to joy, to dread – with a purposeful, drip-fed escalation of tension. Questions of control, abuse and the lingering weight of past scars take hold, all while the usually pleasantly scenic Queenstown landscape is transformed into a suffocatingly claustrophobic ice prison. — Tom Augustine

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