Hagazussa, 2017
A woman and her young daughter, Albrun, live high on a mountainside. Harassed for supposedly being witches, things go rapidly downhill when Albrun's mother comes down with an illness (the plague?) and descends into madness. The final two-thirds of the film follows Albrun as an adult, still living on the mountainside and caring for an infant daughter.
This is a moody, stylish slow-burn. Less a horror film, in my opinion, than a psychological vision of a woman descending into madness accompanied by a few horrifying images.
I struggled with this film, to be honest, and for several reasons.
To begin with, Albrun is truly isolated in her home and in the film. There is, at best, one person who could be considered a secondary character. This means that the arc of the film rests entirely on Albrun's journey. And, by design, that journey only moves in one direction. There is almost no personality given to any of Albrun's tormentors (most of them stay anonymous or even off-screen), so at a certain point you feel as if you're just watching the clock and waiting for the next hit to come. By the time the film gets to what is meant to be the emotional climax, it was hard to keep a straight face. Something that should have been horrifying felt unearned and the end felt like someone who had a good idea for a story but no idea how to bring it to a coherent conclusion.
There was also at times a one-note feeling to the imagery. "How many things can look like a penis or like semen?" seems to have been a driving question. And the problem is not the imagery itself, but more that I could not understand what the film was trying to say with it. Is it meant to be a commentary on Albrun's loneliness and her dearth of positive/consensual physical intimacy? It is meant to say something about her supposed "witchiness"? Albrun endures multiple sexual assaults, and given that almost every male character in the film torments or assaults her in some way, the question of how Albrun regards sex and sexuality could have been an interesting one, but like almost everything else the film holds this at arm's length.
I have to go back to the idea that the film's creators had a concept, but not necessarily a coherent vision. The first third is very strong, but then it all seems to fall apart a bit. Every time an interesting theme seems poised to be developed, the soundtrack drones, there's a close up of Albrun's face, and the scene fades to black. Sex, motherhood, isolation, faith--they're all there, but they're all underbaked.
Worth watching for the strong lead performance, but this is more a demonstration of potential than a satisfying film in its own right.
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