They say not to judge a book by its cover, but there are worse ways to measure a film than by its mood board. Charlotte Colbert’s “She Will,” a witchy tale of vengeance from IFC Midnight, has its heart in the right place, drawing inspiration from a wealth of horror stories (“A Cure for Wellness” and “The Witch,” to name a few). But while the film is often rooted in a beautiful, earthbound horror, it is also a movie torn between two narratives – and, try as it might, it can never quite reconcile its competing instincts.
READ MORE: Watch the Trailer for Charlotte Colbert’s gothic psychological horror “She Will”
After a traumatic surgery, aging Hollywood starlet, Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige), heads into the woods for some time out of the spotlight. With the help of a medical attendant, Desi Hatoum (Kota Eberhardt), Ghent completes the long journey, only to discover that their place of respite was also home to the centuries-old murder of women accused of witchcraft. The forest has healed around that massacre – and the coal mines that sprung up in their stead – but the earth’s memory is long, and Ghent soon finds herself seeing visions of those long-dead sisters.
But the scars she bears are not only physical. Ghent began her film career in 1969 with the film “Navajo Frontier,” a sweeping epic that launched director Eric Hathbourne (Malcolm McDowell) to Hollywood superstardom. Decades later, Hathbourne has begun work on a sequel, with the media turning its hungry gaze back on her career – and her childhood struggles. As Ghent searches for peace in the forest, she begins to build her strength for a long-awaited confrontation. Her recovery, it would seem, will be rather holistic.
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It would be wrong to suggest that Alice Krige is finally having her moment – as an actress, Krige has spent decades earning accolades in both arthouse cinema and Hollywood genre cinema. But between this and films like “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Gretel & Hansel,” we have entered a period of great Krige abundance. Colbert has developed a perfect vehicle for the actress, merging her gravitas with her unique otherness. Krige’s eyes are a vehicle to worlds other than our own, be it artificial intelligence, hell dimensions, or the dark magicka of yesteryear.
In its best moments, “She Will” builds on Krige’s performance to present viewers with a kaleidoscope of paganism. Each night, Ghent’s dreams are haunted with visions of bonfires and decay; each morning, she wakes to find that the forest has left its mark on her soul. Her sharpness towards Desi softens, and her meticulous beauty routines – the mask she wears to navigate the entertainment industry that ruined her – are soon cast aside. Even the prosthetics Ghent wears to hide the scars of her mastectomy eventually end up in the trash. She is reborn from the ashes of the dead.
And as Ghent comes into her own body, we’re treated to more information about the world she left behind. In one of the film’s better sequences, her spirit swims through and around Hathbourne as he guests on a late-night show to discuss a celebrated sequel to “Navajo Frontier.” We soon learn that a 13-year-old Ghent was a victim of Hathbourne, who stumbles his way through difficult questions under her ethereal gaze. This may mark “She Will” as another post-#MeToo genre film, but Colbert’s story goes back decades, challenging (by extension) even the most sacred of cows.
Colbert makes a point of weaving these two threads together – the Hollywood starlet and the witch reborn – working towards a climax that allows Ghent to confront her abuser. But the biggest strength of “She Will” is its production design and atmosphere, not its narrative. Ghent may be gifted with a vengeance arc, but too many of the film’s intriguing ideas – the eccentric support group, the knowing smiles from the townsfolk who urge Hatoum and Ghent on – are subsumed in favor of more explicit catharsis. The countryside is the movie’s heart, but its brain belongs to the polished cityscapes and soundstages. That tension is never quite reconciled.
It’s odd to knock a film for not being more abstract, but Colbert has a true gift for sensory exploration. With Krige as its anchor, “She Will” offers moments of true greatness – and a few pointed barbs at ageism and patriarchal history, too. But as the two sides of Ghent are thrust uneasily together, Colbert struggles to sustain the pulsing rhythm at the heart of the film. “She Will” flirts with the kind of witchiness that many horror movies aspire to but few can obtain – but that land and its bloody history prove to be more the means than the end. We still may enjoy the journey, but the destination leaves a little to be desired. [B-]
“She Will” is set to be released on July 15.