She Will
Presented by Dario Argento, first-time director Charlotte Colbert’s witchy #MeToo story of tit-for-tat vengeance is a watched cauldron that never quite bubbles.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: Alice Krige dressed in rust.
In his 1977 classic Suspiria, director Dario Argento introduced audiences to Mater Suspiriorum, the oldest in an evil triumvirate of powerful ancient witches known as The Three Mothers, who could manipulate the world around them. With vibrant colours and a relentlessly unsettling score by the Italian rock band Goblin, ‘Master of the Thrill’ Argento brought a giallo horror flair to the world of ballet, cementing his masterpiece on ‘Best of’ lists every hallow’s eve. In her Argento-inspired homage, Charlotte Colbert’s feature debut redefines the narrative on female power. Spirits align to settle old scores with an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Women are encouraged to deal and heal from trauma, no brooms required.
Ageing film star Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige) boards a sleeper train headed for a solitary retreat in the Scottish Highlands. Having undergone a double mastectomy, she’s planned a quiet recovery from surgery, as well as an escape from the old wounds reopened by the news that her former director Eric Hathbourne (Malcolm McDowell) plans to remake her 1969 debut film Navajo Frontier. With her private nurse Desi (Kota Eberhardt) in tow, she arrives at the estate to discover that it’s infested with admirers and gossips. Artist fop Tirador (Rupert Everett) fawns over her presence, goading her to stay. In his art class, Veronica learns the land’s dirty secret; 300 years prior, women were burned on the spot during the Scotland Witch Trials. Mysterious forces begin to inspire Veronica to confront the pain in her past, first through her artwork, then in fever dreams. Burned but not destroyed, the DNA of women scorned lives on in the peat rich soil, guiding Veronica toward dark thoughts.
As in Suspiria, She Will makes strong use of colour. The contrast between cool exteriors and warm interior hues recalls the colour technique used in the silent era, particularly the 1922 horror Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages. From the opening shot of a lake upside down, reflective surfaces such as mirrors and windows play a visual role in refracting the story. The soundscape also features prominent buzzing akin to Goblin’s ‘la-la-la’s’. Like the hum of electricity or kindling catching flame, the ground itself has a voice. The land has retained past events and the organic matter left behind heals in more ways than one. Though there will be blood, the film remains surprisingly restrained, with the horror primarily psychological.
There are a lot of strong ideas at work, but they suffer from a heavy hand in the editing room. Alice Krige is endlessly watchable, one lingering shot of her face is enough to tell the whole story, without the need for heavily assembled sequences. The visual correlation of the mastectomy incision to both the physical and emotional parts of womanhood that have been taken from Veronica is evident, yet the incision returns over and over again, along with ambiguous cuts of flora and fauna. Women collectively healing and reclaiming power from abusive white men has all the makings of a perfect horror genre pairing. Atmospheric and moody, the elements are right, but somehow the fire never fully lights. If released in October of 2017, at the height of the Weinstein scandal, this film may have seemed a revelation, but on the whole it feels about five years late. Trauma certainly has no expiration date, but the fiction here falls flat when compared to the real-life horror stories many women have since bravely stepped out of men’s shadows to tell.
CHAD KENNERK
Cast: Alice Krige, Malcolm McDowell, John McCrea, Rupert Everett, Amy Manson, Jonathan Aris, Daniel Lapaine, Kota Eberhardt, Olwen Fouéré, Joanna Bacon, Kenneth Collard.
Dir Charlotte Colbert, Pro Jessica Malik and Bob Last, Screenplay Charlotte Colbert and Kitty Percy, Ph Jamie D. Ramsay, Pro Des Laura Ellis Cricks, Ed Matyas Fekete and Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Music Clint Mansell, Costumes Sian Jenkins.
A Popcorn Group/Pressman Films/Intermission Films-Vertigo Releasing.
95 mins. UK. 2021. US Rel: 15 July 2022. UK Rel: 22 July 2022. Cert. 15.
