Went Up the Hill

In recent years, filmmakers have used the ghost story as an avenue into reflections on not simply grief, but brokenness, dependence, and an aching lonesomeness that can drive a character to desperate acts. David Lowery’s A Ghost Story and Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers each delivered unique, heartbreaking hauntings aided by poignant lead performances.

Co-writer/director Samuel Van Grinsven follows suit, although his latest, Went Up the Hill, skirts a touch closer to horror as the grief-conjured specter takes on a more malevolent nature than the tragic lost souls of the other films.

Award-worthy turns from a pair of leads remains a common thread among the three.

The always effortlessly remarkable Vicky Krieps (The Phantom Thread, Corsage) is Jill, raw and recent widow to a troubled, talented artist whose estranged son Jack (Dacre Montgomery) arrives in time for the isolated New Zealand funeral. Jack claims it was Jill who invited him, but Jill knows better, because Jill’s late wife hasn’t really left.

The whispery score by Hanan Townshend matches Grinsven’s chilly, almost colorless aesthetic—something there that’s not entirely there. The vibe carries through the script and performances, Van Grinsven and his cast mournfully detached, quietly distant, like ghosts. Or like the living, too brittle for direct contact.

As Jack and Jill work through their seemingly bottomless need for the deceased, Van Grinsven, working from a script co-written by Jory Anast, mines for something more obvious than Lowery or Haigh’s films. The filmmaker embraces the genre a bit more forcefully, though it would be tough to categorize Went Up the Hill as a proper horror film.

Instead, it’s an elegant, chilly, bruised reminder that absence doesn’t necessarily mean safety.