REVIEW: Leave [2022]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 106 minutes
Release Date: October 28th, 2022 (Norway) / March 17th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: SF Studios Norge / Shudder
Director(s): Alex Herron
Writer(s): Thomas Moldestad / Dave Spilde, Alex Herron & Thomas Moldestad (story)

My family has kind of a dark past.

Abandoned in a cemetery decades ago, Hunter (Alicia von Rittberg) decides the time to find out what happened is now. While her adoptive father (Clarence Smith)—who is also the cop that found her—believes she’s driving to Georgetown to begin her college career, Hunter hops a plane to Norway to try and put the pieces together.

The Satanic symbols on the blanket she was wrapped in match those found on a flyer for a Scandinavian black metal band that was in town around the same time as when she was left behind. So, under the belief lead singer Cecilia (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) is her mother, she partakes in a little light stalking to figure out for certain. What she discovers is much more complicated. And much darker.

Director Alex Herron and screenwriter Thomas Moldestad’s Leave ensures that we’re prepared for this truth the moment Hunter sets foot on Norwegian land. It’s as though the wolf cross that was left on her finds a connection to an evil entity locked within the country that suddenly reawakens at her presence. This figure begins to haunt Hunter’s dreams with fire—her visage shrouded in darkness and perhaps the ash of whatever tragedy occurred.

These are the sort of details that make sense once Cecilia shares the truth of what happened all those years ago. The story of Kristian (Morten Holst) and Anna (Maria Alm Norell) and the insanity that unfolded against the backdrop of the latter’s very religious family coming into conflict with the former’s demonic musical influences. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital. She ended up dead.

Except, of course, that things are never that cut and dry. Enter Anna’s oppressively cultish relatives led by Stig R. Amdam’s Torstein and you must wonder about what’s going on behind the scenes. From tales of tragic ends befalling Norheim women to a rather chilly family reunion upon Hunter’s arrival and you start to want her to listen to the spirit’s words when hissing “Leave!” Is this woman therefore helping her? Maybe.

The answers ultimately come very quickly at the eleventh hour, tidily wrapping up what is an overly drawn-out narrative of repetitive examples of patriarchal domineering. I think von Rittberg and the effects work with her character’s nightmares do a good job keeping us invested, though. So, while it takes a bit longer to get to the point than is perhaps necessary (or desired), the payoff thankfully succeeds.