WENT UP THE HILL - Mark Reviews Movies

Went Up the Hill, Greenwich Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 14, 2025

Without saying too much at the start (As a warning, the details are for later), Went Up the Hill requires a bit of misdirection in its first act for the truth of co-writer/director Samuel Van Grinsven's story to have an impact. It's easy enough to see what the filmmaker is doing here, by presenting us with a seemingly romantic and regret-filled ghost story, only to show how and why that's all an illusion.

The problem with how Van Grinsven portrays that first part of this tale, though, is in leaning into the romance so much that the movie has yet another hurdle to clear. The depiction of this supernatural love story is presented sincerely and sensually in ways that belie how creepy and disturbing it actually is.

The setup of the story begins with a funeral. It's for a renowned architect named Elizabeth in the home she built for herself and her wife Jill (Vicky Krieps). People have gathered to remember her and sing her praises, but also there is a mysterious young man named Jack (Dacre Montgomery), who has arrived to this remote, mountainous region of New Zealand by bus and has to walk the long, steep road to the dead architect's mansion. We'll leave the pairing of Jack and Jill atop a hill in what becomes a rather dreadfully serious story for Van Grinsven and co-writer Jory Anast to contemplate. Is that kind of jokey idea really the right one for this material?

Anyway, it's soon revealed that Jack is Elizabeth's son, who was apparently given up for adoption after he was born. Elizabeth's sister Helen (Sarah Peirse) is outraged that Jack has come to funeral, but he insists that Jill invited him. As more information is revealed here, we start to wonder why neither Helen nor Jill explain, in the case of the former, what they know or, for the latter, don't know about why Jack's arrival is wrong for several reasons. To do so would give away too much too quickly or just put an end to the story even before it begins, so most of it is left a big mystery—some of it until the very final moments of the movie.

The most important part of the premise is that Elizabeth is a ghost. Jack discovers that when Jill, possessed by her dead wife's spirit, comes into his room and tells him that she, being Elizabeth at the moment, didn't want to give him away when he was younger. That morning, by the way, he had awoken in bed next to Jill, because Elizabeth had possessed her son's body the previous night, so that she could speak to her wife from beyond the grave. Neither has any memory of these possessions, but apparently, they both have to be asleep for the interactions involving the ghost to occur.

It's a bit convoluted, but the real problem arrives during a scene in which Elizabeth possesses Jack, proceeds to seduce Jill, and gets exactly what she wants from her wife while in her son's body. Van Grinsven stages and shoots the scene with such straight-faced legitimacy, from the intimacy of close-ups to the way the naked bodies of the two characters are posed as if foreplay is a photoshoot for them, that the movie doesn't even seem to comprehend the assorted physical and metaphysical crimes and taboos it has unleashed.

Once Elizabeth's true nature is revealed, the actual dynamic of that scene makes a twisted sort of sense. That doesn't mean the filmmakers have to play into that game with such icky sincerity.

The truth of Elizabeth does set the story on a better, more frightening path. She is, basically, as controlling in death as she was in life, which explains the bruises on Jill's body and gets at why Jack was given away from his life. The two have to wrestle with the fact that each of them feels or suspects that there was real love in this woman whenever she wasn't possessive, demanding, and flat-out abusive. If that's the case, there could be some kind of redemption for this wife and mother, who says she still is in as much pain as she was while she was alive. Neither wants to define Elizabeth by her worst actions when she was alive, so why should they, essentially, by what she does as a ghost?

The screenplay, in other words, opens up a lot to contemplate about the nature of abusive relationships, as the victims of different kinds of them at the hands of the same person remain trapped by uncertainty and trauma even after the death of their abuser. Van Grinsven makes that psychological angle tangible here in more appropriately, thoughtfully uncomfortable ways—ways that do, of course, make us wonder even more why that first act intentionally deflects and puts itself in unnecessarily awkward situations.

Went Up the Hill still remains gimmicky, in playing games with the rules of the ghostly possession, and contrived, since Helen could put a quick end to this with only a line or two of dialogue at any point in the story. Too much of the movie works against its good intentions.

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