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…
