Rating: NR | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: August 15th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Vendetta Films / Greenwich Entertainment
Director(s): Samuel Van Grinsven
Writer(s): Samuel Van Grinsven and Jory Anast

How is this real?

A troubled woman dies, leaving behind an estranged wife and estranged son who never knew the other existed until now. It’s why Helen (Sarah Peirse) is the only person who seems as if she’s seen a ghost when Jack (Dacre Montgomery) shows up to Jill’s (Vicky Krieps) house for the funeral. How did he know to come? Because Jill called. How did she know to call him? Because it wasn’t her on the phone. No, Elizabeth’s spirit is still somehow holding on and inhabiting her wife’s body to orchestrate this reunion with a sinister goal in mind.

Yes, Samuel Van Grinsven’s Went Up the Hill is led by two characters named Jack and Jill. But they aren’t fetching a pail of water. What they are doing, however, is falling down. A lot. Elizabeth can only enter their bodies when they are asleep, transferring between them with ease and leading both to hit the ground before one rises as themself and the other as her. And they do this willingly. Jill to be with the woman she loves and Jack to put a “face” to the memories of love that still linger in his heart.

Is it a healthy nighttime activity? Definitely not. For one, Van Grinsven and Jory Anast’s script does go where you presume it might as far as the subject of consent is concerned. But there’s also the psychological ramifications of holding onto this impossible dynamic instead of accepting the anguish of grief. It’s the latter that ultimately exacerbates things because their need to give themselves to Elizabeth rapidly cedes control of the situation to her entirely. Even the thought of shutting things down forces her to do whatever’s necessary to remain in reality.

Went Up the Hill is thus born from later versions of the nursery rhyme, specifically those that contain the line “Mother, vex’d, did whip her next.” That last word is crucial because it reveals, without overtly stating as much, that “he” was whipped first. So, when the love angle wanes, Elizabeth resorts to less savory methods of coercion. It could be abusing Jill while in Jack’s body. Or maybe abusing them both via self-harm while the other is forced to watch. There is no line too far to cross. Not when she’s the one who truly refuses to be left alone.

That selfishness if the driving force behind everything. It’s what led Jack to be raised by strangers. It’s why Jill was pushed away despite her devotion. It’s why this threesome was arranged from beyond the grave to hopefully (in Elizabeth’s mind) facilitate an end game that would provide her—and solely her—exactly what she desires regardless of the collateral damage. I really don’t like calling it “selfishness” considering the facts yet to be revealed, though. Elizabeth is obviously afflicted by mental illness and the script refuses to engage with it beyond the horror of her actions while caught in its throes.

It’s therefore a tough work to fully embrace when everything it does so well in giving Jack and Jill the room to introspectively acknowledge their trauma sort of comes undone by its rejection of allowing Elizabeth to be anything but a monster. That’s fine if this were demonic possession. Had Van Grinsven and Anast thrown something in where “Elizabeth” reveals herself to be Satan using her name to collect souls for Hell, I’d be much higher on the overall picture. But they don’t. They conversely turn this broken soul into that demon. And, as a result, transfer some of the blame onto Jack and Jill for still loving her.

Am I thinking too hard? Probably. One could argue their love for her despite her violence is all we need. Let Elizabeth be a monster because Jack and Jill’s presence reveals her humanity without demanding concrete evidence. I get that. This is a story about the survivors, not the predator. I guess it’s just that their process of inherently reducing mental illness into evil sticks out when there are many other ways to inject nuance into the equation to prove this isn’t the case. Because the film is well made and does treat the experiences of those victims authentically.

Sometimes a villain is just a villain. It’s why Helen is included as a figure to perhaps be wrongly vilified like Elizabeth is perhaps wrongly given the benefit of the doubt. How that angle pans out isn’t tough to predict, but its emotional weight lingers nonetheless. Credit Krieps and Montgomery for embodying the vulnerability, fear, and yearning that propels these characters to allow themselves to be used as vessels for the other’s healing. They’re both performing three-in-one roles: lost, Elizabeth, and found. Initially subdued by their own pain, learning how that torment originates from a shared source jolts them awake.

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Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery in WENT UP THE HILL; courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.