While it wouldn’t be unreasonable to dismiss gay filmmaker and co-writer Samuel Van Grinsven’s “Went Up the Hill” (Greenwich Entertainment) as style over substance, there are still enough elements, including the performance of Dacre Montgomery (of “Stranger Things” fame), to make it worth watching.
Like 2024’s “Handling The Dead” and 2025’s “Bring Her Back,” “Went Up the Hill” deals with the toll that loss can take on survivors.
Jack (Montgomery), who was taken from his unfit mother, Elizabeth, when he was young, returns to New Zealand for her funeral. Elizabeth, an architect who committed suicide by walking onto a frozen lake with heavy rocks in her pockets, is survived by her wife Jill (Vicky Krieps), as well as her sister Helen (Sarah Peirse). Helen was the one who arranged for Jack to be removed from Elizabeth’s care.
Initially made to feel unwelcome by Helen, Jill invites Jack to stay. That’s when things get really weird. Elizabeth’s ghost begins to alternate between taking control of Jack and Jill’s bodies while they sleep. The outcome is that she makes them do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. In Jack’s case, when Elizabeth takes over his body, she encourages Jill to prevent Jack from going back home to his gay male partner Ben, with whom he has an already fragile relationship. Additionally, through Jack, Elizabeth tries to convince Jill to end her life so that they can be together. Nice!
When Elizabeth enters Jill, the behavior is even more unsettling as she engages in sexual intimacy with Jack. So, we can technically add incest to the already bizarre situation, right?
Eventually, the actions of this trinity begin to evolve into increasingly destructive behavior. By the end of the movie, when we find Jack and Jill, pockets full of rocks, crossing the fragile ice of the frozen lake, the dread that Van Grinsven and co-writer Jory Anast (who also collaborated with the director on his 2019 debut feature “Sequin in a Blue Room”) is beyond palatable.
Stylistically, “Went Up the Hill” looks great, although the stark artifice begins to wear as thin as the ice. Additionally, the movie could be 15-20 minutes shorter and still get its haunting point across.
Rating: C+
