Like most classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes, the story of Jack and Jill — who so iconically “went up the hill to fetch a pail of water” — is pretty scary. Jack and Jill are simply going about their daily lives, chores and all!, when Jack takes a tumble and Jill follows right behind. Jack gets up, makes it home, and is patched up. We don’t hear anymore about Jill. We don’t know how she fares.
In Samuel Van Grinsven’s chilly ghost story, “Went Up the Hill,” we learn much more about Jack and Jill (our two main characters exist in a story clearly named for their Mother Goose rhyme, more of a bug than a feature), including not just why they may have gone up said hill to get some water (more than a pail’s worth, that’s for sure) but everything that happened to get them up there. The tumbles? They’re pretty traumatic, and the ghostly spirit at the heart of Van Grinsven’s latest is scary (and unknowable) enough to power plenty of spooky stories, but perhaps not an entire feature.
Fortunately, however, for as much as Van Grinsven leans on vibes (read: heavily), he’s also cast a pair of compelling performers to add real dimension to this particular apparition. We first meet Jack (Dacre Montgomery) as he’s chugging his way to (oh, geez, fine, OK, we get it) a foreboding hill that he must climb to get to the world’s least appealing funeral. Set in remote, color-sapped New Zealand, we know the house he’s entering is moneyed and luxe, but it’s also deeply unwelcoming and, in the most charitable of words, looks a hell of a lot like something we’re more likely to find in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Its inhabitants are not much better. Jack sneaks in during the last rites of recently deceased artist Elizabeth (who we never “see” and never really come to know, even as she will lord over nearly every frame and feeling of the film). Elizabeth, we’re told by her grim sister Helen (Sarah Peirse, with a sneakily great performance ahead of her), left behind her “two greatest loves” when she passed: this house, and her wife Jill (Vicky Krieps). When she catches Jack’s eye, we get it just as clearly as he does: he was not included in this list of loves.
Why then, did Jill invite Jack to this funeral? While we soon learn Jack’s relation to the family — he was Elizabeth’s only child, and one either cast out of her life by her own selfishness or one saved by the quick-thinking of a terrified Helen, choose whichever appeals to you most — it’s less clear how he will fit into Elizabeth’s life with Elizabeth, well, no longer living in it. Don’t worry, she’s got ideas for how to fix that.
Despite Jack’s insistence that it was Jill who invited him to the event, it’s obvious Jill has no idea who the kid is, but that might be the least of her worries. Mired in her grief, she takes to sleeping next to Elizabeth’s casket, and when she asks Jack to say, she makes too tragic a figure to leave. Even in this state, Krieps cuts a formidable figure, a magnetic presence who Jack rightly believes is the only living person who can explain who his mother was. The key, of course, is living. Because Jack and Jill are not alone in the house, and each night, as they crumple into feverish sleep, they are visited by a spectral force: Elizabeth, who soon starts taking over their bodies at her leisure.
Whether you believe in possession will likely dictate how far you’re willing to ride with “Went Up the Hill,” and while Van Grinsven and co-writer Jory Anast struggle to unspool some key elements of said possession (though the “rules” of it eventually snap into place in the final act, a big help), Krieps and Montgomery sell the hell out of it. Early moments with the performers steep us in their mannerisms and motivations, so when Elizabeth “takes over,” the result is both a feat of acting and genuinely upsetting. But is it real?
It’s a question worth chewing on, but “Went Up the Hill” is ultimately concerned with more real-world issues. The stuff of daily lives. Chores and mental wellness, all that stuff. And so while “Went Up the Hill” is indeed a ghost story and possession tale, it’s also a story about the very real, very traumatic things that haunt us. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes might help contextualize them, but it’s better to face that darkness head on, even if if involves some stumbling along the way.
Grade: B-
“Went Up the Hill” premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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