We know the English nursery rhyme, ‘Jack and Jill,’ in its straightforward form from 1765’s John Newbery‘s Mother Goose’s Melody. They go up the hill to get water and fall all the way down. Have you got all that? Cool. New versions have added verses to give the story a little more depth. With Samuel Van Grinsven’s feature, “Went Up The Hill,” the goal is to deepen these characters with a ghost story that leans heavily on its leads and a gothic, melancholy aesthetic that blankets everything. There is barely any sunshine, and this film’s main house’s architecture could be likened to a sprawling, imposing tomb. The film deals with an actual ghost, but it also deals with the specters of grief, abuse, and identity. All these themes are locked in a dance with the dark cloud hanging over the entire film’s runtime. Once Van Grinsven and co-writer Jory Anast’s premise locks in, there’s a ticking clock to how compelling it stays.
Jack (Dacre Montgomery) walks up a mountain and heads to a funeral in remote New Zealand. In a perfect world, the foliage and ocean would be chicken soup for the soul, but things are different here. The house he walks into and the surrounding environment shape the day at hand. The funeral itself is for Jack’s mother, Elizabeth, who gave him up when he was very little. There’s an initial awkwardness from the simple fact that Jack doesn’t know anyone there – even Jill (Vicky Krieps), Elizabeth’s widow, doesn’t know who he is. Jack insists that Jill call and invite him, but she does not remember this happening. His aunt Helen (Sarah Peirse) knows who he is, but there is much unspoken hesitation in being a welcomed return. How did Elizabeth up and forget to tell Jill she had a son, and how did Jill know to make that phone call? Now that Elizabeth is dead, it seems like the last chance she and her son can make some sort of amends has gone away forever. But that’s where “Went Up The Hill” turns, knowing there is always energy between the missing pieces. If the house is indeed a sarcophagus, then perhaps Elizabeth can find a way to attend to unfinished business.
Rightfully so, Jill is a mess after the services are over. To avoid being alone, she invites the stepson, whom she never knew she had to stay over for an indefinite amount of time. Jack gives Jill a person with a sense of vulnerability and warmth, and on the flipside, Jill gives Jack some insight into the mother he barely knows. As the first act of Went Up The Hill shows, there are a lot of unspoken secrets and breadcrumbs that the past may not have been so kind to both of them. However, they are not alone in figuring it out because Elizabeth’s aura is present. As Jack and Jill fall into a deep sleep, her spirit takes turns possessing one of them. Thus, their bodies become a conduit to get some questions answered straight from the source.
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To their credit, Montgomery and Krieps take care in contorting their facial expressions and movements to show the changes that have been made. The visits, paired with the sound design and Tyson Perkins’s camera style, obscure vision or show perspectives in mirrors. Even though what we perceive feels real, the way the atmosphere takes on a dreamlike form doesn’t. Van Grinsven covers Went Up The Hill in ambiguity; there aren’t many hard-fast rules of the possession occurring (to be fair, the audience is figuring it out as Jack and Jill do), and the film’s ultimate statement is not until its conclusion. Until then, there’s a sense that Montgomery and Krieps’s characters are at the mercy of something they perhaps might want to be. However, as time passes, it becomes clearer that maybe Elizabeth wasn’t the greatest person in the world.
Ultimately, “Went Up The Hill” speaks to the extensive time physical and emotional tolls can take to heal. Things meet an impasse because the film elects to follow its metaphorical rabbit hole down to a point where it can no longer go. Thus, the effect of how effectively both protagonists convey this story begins to wane. It’s as if the elusive nature of this mystery presents itself can’t find a way to find a natural conclusion. There’s the point of being kept in the cycle in which this storytelling method poignantly displays – then there’s the decision to refer to it continuously because there might not be another place to go. “Went Up The Hill” will stick with you because it’s unconventional in its method and makes the subject matter of past wounds feel important.
Such a thing exists as being entranced by something so much that you can’t see where the landing is. To that token, the dynamics take the wheel where there is not enough story to lean on.
“Went Up the Hill” premiered and was reviewed at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Read more here.
