Following up his debut feature, Sequin in a Blue Room, New Zealand filmmaker Samuel Van Grinsven gives us a different kind of ghost story with Went Up the Hill. The film is the story of a Jack (Dacre Montgomery, from Stranger Things and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis), a grown man who was abandoned as a child by his mother, Elizabeth, with whom he has had no contact since he was taken away from her after suspected abuse. He returns to New Zealand, thinking he’s been contacted by her to reconcile, when in fact she somehow reached out knowing she’d be dead and now he’s attending her wake. Elizabeth’s widow, Jill (Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread), didn’t even know he existed before his arrival. In fact, the only person who seems aware of Jack is his Aunt Helen (Sarah Peirse), who Jack always blamed for tearing him apart from his mother when he was just a child.
Trying to make peace with this new information about her wife, Jill invites Jack to stay in her home until the funeral, but on the first night, she is possessed by the ghost of Elizabeth and ends up conversing with a disbelieving Jack. The moment isn’t meant to be scary (although it is), and the ghost seems genuinely eager to be informative and answer Jack’s questions. But at some point, the ghost jumps into Jack’s body, leaving Jill on the receiving end of a conversation with this paranormal visitor. Questions arise about why the ghost is still around, what it wants from either of them, and what conditions must be met for the ghost to come visiting. Neither Jack nor Jill (names that can’t be a coincidence) seems to be able to let go of the idea of Elizabeth, since both have unique sets of questions for her, and that seems to be the key to her remaining in the house.
But as Elizabeth’s ghost makes its presence more and more regular, we begin to understand that, even in life, there was something not quite right about her. As Jack quizzes his aunt about when she called a social worker on his mother, he remembers that she was mentally unstable and abusive. Jill also is forced to confront the less idealized version of her wife over the course of these ghostly visits, and it becomes clear that Elizabeth wants something quite extreme from both of these living souls in order to stay in their lives forever.
Less a horror-tinged experience, Went Up the Hill is something of an intimate mystery. Since both Jack and Jill are gay, when Elizabeth uses Jack’s body to comfort her wife, he considers that a violation. But it’s also one of the earliest clues that Elizabeth ghost isn’t considering the best interests of either of her host bodies. Co-written by Van Grinsven and Jory Anast, the film is at its best when Jack and Jill find their common bond in not just grief but in getting through their pain with each other’s help. Letting go is the toughest part of loss, but it’s the key to their survival.
The other-worldly feel of New Zealand’s South Island adds volumes to the atmosphere of the movie, and Krieps' subtle performance both as Jill and a possessed person is mesmerizing. With different actors, this might not have worked as well, but Krieps and Montgomery have a true connection in their shared trauma, and it makes the film click into place beautifully.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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