STRANGER THINGS’ Dacre Montgomery Has A Dark Flashback In Exclusive WENT UP THE HILL Clip
We’ve all heard the rhyme before: Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. But what happens when a filmmaker takes that age-old story and twists it into something darker? That’s the premise behind Went Up the Hill, a New Zealand ghost story hitting theaters this month, and FANGORIA is excited to debut an exclusive clip from the new film.
Starring Dacre Montgomery alongside Vicky Krieps and Sarah Peirse, Went Up the Hill is written and directed by Samuel Van Grinsven, with producers Vicky Pope, Samantha Jennings, and Kristina Ceyton. The film’s synopsis is as follows:
Abandoned as a child, Jack travels to remote New Zealand for the funeral of his estranged mother, Elizabeth. There, he meets her widow, Jill, and over the nights that follow, Elizabeth's spirit begins to possess them in turn. What starts as a search for closure soon unearths deeper wounds. Bound by grief and haunted by what remains, Jack and Jill must break free from Elizabeth’s grasp before she pushes them to the edge. Set against the deeply atmospheric backdrop of New Zealand’s South Island, WENT UP THE HILL is an intimate, modern ghost story that explores the legacy of loss and the struggle to let go.
The clip features Jill helping Jack bathe after some kind of mysterious injury. When she gently submerges him under the water, he looks up at her through the gentle ripples, only for the vision of what seems like a kind gesture to turn sour the longer he stays under. His vision goes red, and he hears the cries of children in his head, but comes up for air before the audience gets an idea of what’s really going on.
“In approaching Went Up the Hill, I was grappling with themes of control – the loss of it, both given and taken – and the regaining of it to shape one's future,” Vam Grinsven said in a statement. “In confronting the many faces of control, be it of the body or the mind, the film was born. A three-hander, told with two actors – a triangle of interdependent characters each seeking control via the act of giving it over entirely…Inspired by nostalgic memories of my childhood in New Zealand’s remote South Island, Went Up the Hill is an intimate, modern ghost story that dances in the tension between genres to explore the extremities of grief in our pursuit of letting go.”
Went Up the Hill hits theaters on August 15. Check out the exclusive clip below:
