SHE WILL (REVIEW)

Dir. Charlotte Colbert

Reviewer. Martyn Wakefield

Witchcraft and slow burn are attributes to producer Dario Argento and comparisons to his masterpiece, SUSPIRIA, are inevitable. Yet despite its vivid imagery, SHE WILL has a much more poignant and grounded story to tell.

Alice Krige (SILENT HILL) stars as an ageing film star who escapes to a Forrest retreat after surgery. Accompanied by her nurse after recovering from a mastectomy. Soon after arriving her companions at the retreat become overwhelming leaving her to find escape in a local cabin. Unbeknownst to her, the area is on sacred ground and the earth has a greater connection to her past than she yet knows.

Laced in beautiful cinematography often escaping from the films gruelling subject matter, Jamie Ramsay makes the mundane look entrancing with wide shots of the idyllic woodland amongst sludgy dirt that gets under the nails, this really is a film that needs to be seen on the biggest and crispest screen possible, alongside the mesmerizing sound from Clint Mansell giving echoes of early Argento amongst the haunting score.

Krige gives a show stealing performance by oft giving nothing away. Her depression and loneliness are a burden carried throughout the film and as she finally garners the power to remove the weight her performance begins to show life that has been held back for all these years.

For those who enjoy the female centric performances of CENSOR and SAINT MAUD will find much to enjoy here. With a strong woman taking control of the life restraining events of her past is both satisfying and chillingly emotional knowing that this revenge is wanton in the real world yet never executed without more pain.

Charlotte Colbert has done a sterling job of bringing yet another voice to horror cinema and delivers a bewitching story that proves once more why horror and the supernatural are a great release for the horrors of real life.