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Samuel Van Grinsven’s Went Up The Hill starts like many classic plays – an unwanted stranger arrives. In this case, it’s a funeral, and the stranger is Jack (Dacre Montgomery), the estranged son of Elizabeth, the deceased. He is there, against his aunt’s will, at the apparent invitation of Jill (Vicky Krieps), Elizabeth’s widow, though she denies this, as she didn’t know of his existence. Alas, she invites him to stay at their home in a remote and austere area of New Zealand, where the skies are dark grey, contrasting with the house’s black stone and grim mood.

The mystery is quickly unveiled with more questions than answers. It was Elizabeth’s ghost who possessed Jill to call her son. And now, every night, that same ghost takes the body of one of them to talk to the others. For Jack, it is a way to understand why his mother gave him up so early and abandoned him so easily, and for Jill, it is an opportunity to confront the traumatic psychological violence of Elizabeth, and to perpetuate the complicated feelings of deeply loving someone we know is not suitable for us.

It’s one hell of a premise that Van Grinsven delivers with the sang-froid of an experienced filmmaker. It’s not easy to tackle a gothic ghost story without giving into the supernatural elements for shocks and thrills, instead highlighting its characters’ trauma and grief almost to mathematical precision. An audience member who goes into Went Up The Hill hoping for a traditional horror story won’t have their needs met, but I can see someone still reeling from grief understanding the language of Van Grinsven.

All the characters are shells of what they could be. It helps that Montgomery and especially Krieps are great actors who convey a lot from the silence of their eyes. Van Grinsven is only interested in how grief and trauma merge when we’re trying to reason with both of them. It’s like a shapeless blob inside of you that, try as you might, you can’t explain to others, and must deal with it alone. Van Grinsven personifies that lonely journey by having two characters, who don’t know each other, address their pain through each other.

The result can be off-putting to many. Went Up The Hill is a quiet and sombre film that lets the trauma and grief take a metaphysical form with no recourse to action. It’s silent because so is anguish. It requires patience from its audience to open itself to understand its characters, and address that what they are dealing with is personal to them. We’re just witnessing. In a way, it lies somewhere between the works of Jane Campion and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And that’s not to say Van Grinsven is on the same level as those two; very few filmmakers are, but he understands the value of exploring a complex sentiment without holding the audience’s hand.

Complementing this is the impressive work of cinematographer Tyson Perkins, who shoots the sprawling and never-ending exteriors with the same oppressive drabness as the cold interiors. This enhances the isolation of both characters as they become obsessed with the comfort the ghost is giving them. Suddenly, it doesn’t even feel like New Zealand, and they are living with the body inside the coffin.

Went Up The Hill rewards the patient. The supernatural side is only a conduit for the theme, and therefore lacks proper expression. The scenes with Elizabeth’s sister could have added dramatic weight to the whole situation and are particularly disappointing as she’s beautifully played by Sarah Peirse. But Went Up The Hill achieves what it set out to do, whether we like it or not. And that confrontation with our personal agony dictates if we’re open to Van Grinsven’s expression of dreary grief.

Verdict: 4 out of 5
For everyone still dealing with personal ghosts, both metaphorical and real.