SYNOPSIS
Recovering alcoholic Michi (Cornelia Ivancan) retreats to her estranged father’s isolated countryside house with her eight-year-old daughter Hanna (Lola Herbst), hoping to mend the bond shattered after a drunk-driving accident. But the quiet refuge quickly turns hostile, as long-buried memories surface, and whispers of Michi’s mother — who died by suicide in the house — begin to seep into every room. Hanna starts sleepwalking. An eerie drawing of a woman in purple appears. Neighbors speak in riddles about a spirit that never left. As shadows move through the overgrown garden and night terrors escalate, Michi becomes convinced her mother’s presence is stalking them. Haunted by visions and wracked with paranoia, she spirals back into alcohol, her grip on reality unraveling as fear gives way to rage. And when Hanna nearly wanders into traffic during a midnight trance, Michi realizes the haunting is no longer confined to the house –it lives inside her. The nightmare reaches its peak in a vast sunflower field, where Michi confronts the monstrous apparition of her mother and the devastating truth of her own inherited trauma. In a final act of desperation, Michi must choose between surrendering to the darkness or breaking a generational curse before she becomes the very monster threatening her child.
What We Thought:
Smother isn’t the type of movie that usually works for me, but I actually didn’t mind it. It won’t wow too many people, but it’s well shot and well acted. The actresses playing the mother & daughter hold your attention throughout and make the movie much more watchable than I expected in a supernatural thriller.
Supernatural films usually do nothing for me. They are usually filled with jumpscares and have terrible explanations that leave you scratching your head by the end. Smother has supernatural elements, but the two actresses ground the film and make it more about trauma and their relationship than the supernatural being that’s doing all the damage.
That’s why I didn’t mind it. The two actresses are fantastic especially the younger one playing the daughter. She goes toe to toe with her older castmates and is a major positive in the film. The mother and daughter have issues because the mother drinks and causes an accident which to me is the heart of the story. Yes the family takes over the family home after the father/grandfather dies and there is a haunting creature tied to the mother’s past, but it’s that dynamic between the two characters that held my attention throughout.
Smother is the type of foreign film I can 100% see Hollywood remaking here in the States. It could work because the paranormal stuff doesn’t seem to be tied to the lore of a specific country. The father dying, the mother already being dead and their daughter now being a mother herself is a pretty universal storytelling angle. I thought it was well made and doesn’t wander too far from what it’s trying to do. For a film I knew nothing about, I recommend it.
The Nerds Templar 