Rating: NR | Runtime: 104 minutes
Studio: Mongrel Media
Director(s): Tim Riedel
Writer(s): Tim Riedel
I just want to heal so I stop bleeding on the people who didn’t cut me.
It’s easy to misconstrue the opening scene to Métis filmmaker Tim Riedel’s Ancestral Beasts since the resulting presumption is the point. Because regardless of the entity’s origins (external from the victim as a demonic force or internal as a manifestation of trauma), it sticks solely to its target. It neither attacks Max (Josh Strait) as he watches from outside nor Adèle (Gail Maurice) when she rushes in to see what’s happened. Only one body is left in its wake.
Except, of course, that these tragedies don’t stop at one death. They can’t since they also didn’t start with it. When you’re talking about the generational trauma alluded to by the title and known to be a large factor in the lives of indigenous people throughout the world, every casualty is a product of and catalyst for many others. Mathilde’s pain was inherited and her suicide subsequently impacts her daughters’ ability to withstand its ever-growing weight.
We see it the moment they’re introduced. Elyse (Morgan Holmstrom) is literally vibrating with frustration and rage. Nikki (Morgan Holmstrom) suffocates every living soul inside any room she enters. The pain they’ve endured since birth is present in their DNA and has been the source of pretty much every bad choice and self-destructive tendency they’ve unleashed. It’s gotten so toxic that the sisters can’t even turn it off for each other. It might actually be worse.
That’s why Elyse needs to get away. Not just from work after yet another incident with a customer that sees her boss ready to fire her, but from Nikki too. Between the latter’s insistence that the former would be lost without her and that stir from deep within that cannot be shaken, it’s time for space if only to recalibrate with calm before an inevitable return. Is the house where her mother killed herself the best landing spot? Probably not.
It’s what she has, though. Once Adèle disappeared, it became their last familial connection. So, Elyse drives to the country, discovers Max can’t help but be creepy, and unwittingly sparks two reunions: one with her cousin Shay (Shannon Baker) and the other with the entity still lingering in the darkness of that home. It’s less a matter of which reaches her first than which she’ll let in. And don’t assume “love” is an easy choice when she feels destined to destroy it.
Why do so many push away the people who care most? It’s not because they don’t want the help. It’s because they don’t want their suffering to spill over and let their demons latch onto innocents who’ve done nothing but find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time for the right reasons. It’s why Nikki should be the perfect partner. She knows the struggle. Just because trauma is shared, however, doesn’t mean they haven’t each tweaked the recipe.
The result makes it so they become scarier to each other than the demon. Nikki’s domineering attitude warped from a sense of duty is more oppressive than anything the beetle-like hand crawling under the floorboards could do. That’s not to say Elyse doesn’t love her or attempt to reach out when things get bad. These are complicated issues and Ancestral Beasts is a complicated horror film. Because there is no good versus evil here. It’s just survival.
So, while things seem to get a bit shaky during the middle act as new characters are introduced like Asivak Koostachin’s Cody and the action turns generic with Elyse trying to escape the creature hunting her in the night, it’s just because we don’t yet understand the full picture. We don’t know the source of the entity or the power dynamic between it and her. What if it’s not attacking at all? What if its purpose is to protect her even if that means from herself?
Everything comes together during the third act as answers are revealed and more blood is shed. The characters caught in the crosshairs may not be who you expect either since none of this is an exact science. When anxiety hits and the fight or flight impulse kicks in, controlling the fallout is a fool’s errand. Part of the reason why it’s so difficult to get help and confront the root cause is because of the fear that those you confide in will inevitably become your next victims.
Riedel takes us to some tough places as a result. His script demands that his characters understand the no-win situation they are in insofar as revealing how protecting yourself might mean letting someone else go. There’s a lot of regret on-screen that’s either been earned or passed down. A lot of guilt that they must learn to live with to not lose themselves too. Despite the creature feature tropes, this is complex subject matter handled in an extremely mature way.
Elyse (Morgan Holmstrom) discovers something unexpected under the bed in ANCESTRAL BEASTS. Filmed in studio on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Photo by John Wapioke. Image courtesy of Michif Koonteur.
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