By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Elise Finnerty
Starring: Elise Finnerty | Estelle Girard Parks | Jenna Rose Sander | Nathan Wallace | Samuel Dunning
Country: united_states
Year: 2022
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14080416/reference/
Brett says: “This debut feature from director Elise Finnerty is an elevated genre film that leans into the familiar folk horror tradition of tying present to pagan pasts. As the title implies, herein lies a new take on the witchcraft sub-genre, but one with unique perspective that reverses the objectivity and places it on the ‘witch hunters’ and the loads they must bear generationally.
“The film follows two siblings, each on their own searches for meaning and self-assurance following the reported suicide of their father. The two of them have to travel back to their childhood home, an estate plentiful in farming, in order to tie up loose ends following the father’s death. Each sibling has made their own path away from the family tradition, and the return to face the father’s legacy sparks repressed tensions between the two and even within themselves. Complicating the need to process the inheritance of the father’s way of life (which neither fully chooses to call their own), the estate is managed by an ambiguous pair of women—sisters, if you will—who seem to be an impasse of any attempts at solace. The ambiguity of these two women’s roles is at the heart of any attempts at meaning and debate in the film, as our movie-going traditions in this sub-genre would typically have us consider both nefarious beings behind the scenes, but there is also enough to point the finger back at the siblings to suggest there might be something more at play with each one’s own inner demons that they are conjuring up themselves.
“Stylistically, there is an almost Impressionist approach to the storytelling here. Normally, this is in alignment with a personal preference for ‘showing’ in cinema and letting the film form after having a chance to step back from all the brushstrokes to see the holistic work. However, some of the over-stylized sequence-to-sequence choices make the cinematic language here a bit more expressionist than narrative while still never letting go of the apparent need to tell a story. The film is not devoid of narrative. However, even within most of the dialogue sequences, there isn’t enough balance with the frequent drifts in and out of dreamy landscape shots and ambiguous character contemplation montages that do not add anything to our understanding of where a character is in their own battle within themselves. Instead, all of this attention to mood comes across as dreamy edits for dreamy edits’ sake, which ultimately leads to the film-makers drawing too much attention to themselves rather than blending the story into these visual components. It’s clear that each sibling has issues, but the effect of focusing on recycling atmospheric sequences does not do enough to add any new layer of conflict to the already existing ones. Because of this, the eventual climax seems a bit overdramatic and ‘tropey’ since the music video-like montages get more attention. In short, the film struggles between progressing the narrative and creating an abundance of atmospheric effect when it would benefit more from just choosing a lane. Creating atmosphere is the logical intent of so many narrative meanderings, but the repetitive nature of these long establishing shots followed by person-to-person interaction montage sequences became burdensome after seeing so many that were not ever broken up with any scenes with actual meaningful dialogue or satisfying narrative progression.
“I have to think that the film-makers surely are aware that we know and understand the nature of slow burn, but this film seems like it’s building to a reveal that should be obvious to anyone with any background on this sort of lore. As opposed to more effective slow burns, this is more of a dangling of a carrot that we can all see and know is there while a more satisfying approach is pulling the sheet off of the hidden object of which we have only had textural impressions underneath the surface.
“Challenging still is the lead performance from Nathan Wallace that seems to be channeling Casey Affleck a little too much in establishing his character early on. This approach came across as very put-upon at times.
“Overall, films with a slow burn are a tricky subject. There will be plenty of folk horror aficionados who lap up all of the atmospheric dream sequences though, so do not shy away if this layering of effect works for you. (It is here that I must note, however, that I cringed at one particular series that relied on the already overused trope in movies of a character waking up from a bad dream; in this case, we have an awakening from a dream that was happening outside of another dream.) To its credit, it’s undeniable that the music selections in this film are outstanding in keeping the viewer’s attention during these reflections on mood. 2 cats out of 5“