Went Up the Hill Review: Samuel Van Grinsven’s Moody, Grief-Stricken Ghost Story Boasts Mesmerising Visuals But Stumbles on its Languid Storytelling
Grief plays a significant part in Went Up the Hill, marking Samuel Van Grinsven’s sophomore feature after Sequin in a Blue Room. He explores the familiar subject through the lens of minimalist filmmaking, favouring a subdued thematic and aesthetic quality over big and showy moments. The movie doesn’t waste time delving straight into the state of darkness with the pensive sight of Jill (Vicky Krieps) looking like a hollow shell sitting motionless on a bed. Her wife, Elizabeth, has died by suicide, and the funeral service commences at her remote countryside home up the hill on New Zealand’s South Island.
A mysterious young man named Jack (Dacre Montgomery of Stranger Things fame) arrives to attend the funeral. But nobody knows who he is, even though he swears Jill invited him in the first place. And yet, she doesn’t recall doing so but ends up wanting Jack to stay even after her angry sister Helen (Sarah Peirse) demands he leave. Jill learns that Jack happens to be the son of Elizabeth, whom she gave up for adoption when he was just a child.
Van Grinsven, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jory Anast, also incorporates a ghost story in the form of a possession-horror trope, but not in the way you normally expect in such a genre. Instead, the movie uses the familiar supernatural element as a metaphor for sorrow over the loss of a loved one, loneliness and abandonment as seen from the equally desolated Jack and Jill. The night when Jack agrees to stay over, something weird happens. The ghost of Elizabeth returns, where her spirit possesses them both one at a time.
Apparently, she uses their bodies as vessels to communicate with each other while the two slowly learn the truth about Elizabeth’s past. One thing that keeps me hooked to Went Up the Hill is Van Grinsven’s meticulous visual choices in reflecting the sombre tone of his movie. Tyson Perkins’s atmospheric cinematography perfectly mirrors the chilly and stark landscapes of New Zealand’s South Island, regardless of daylight and nighttime scenes, giving the movie a disquieting sense of slow-burning dread.
Van Grinsven emphasises heavily on the use of lighting, shadows and pitch-black darkness with a painterly eye that it’s hard not to immerse in its evocative visual aesthetic. Even the house where Jill resides manifests as a character itself — a modern, Scandinavian-style structure with cement walls that is as cold and steely as the overall mood of the movie. No doubt that Went Up the Hill is a triumph in its technical point of view, with further credits extending to Sherree Philips’ subtly low-key production design and Hanan Townshend’s ambient score.
Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery deliver beautifully understated performances, and they did a good job playing the grief-stricken characters being possessed by a spirit every now and then. As much as I appreciate Van Grinsven’s direction leaning on the melancholy both visually and thematically, along with the two principal stars’ acting, there’s only so much a movie can do to sustain interest.
Despite the movie clocking in at 100 minutes, Van Grinsven’s rigidly glum and ambiguous nature tends to be a test of patience. The pace is lethargic even for a slow-burn movie, while Van Grinsven and Anast’s hazy screenplay leaves me more frustrated than absorbed by the story until the end. By the time the payoff arrives at some point, it rather deflates, lacking all the necessary emotional and dramatic weight to justify all the lingering wait. If only the screenplay were given a little more polish, Went Up the Hill wouldn’t have resulted in a missed opportunity.
