The Surrender is a psychological occult horror film about grief and family relationships that uses a ritual as an allegory.

• Scare factor: ★★★☆☆
• Psychological factor: ★★★★☆
• Dysfunctional family factor: ★★★★☆
• Surreal factor: ★★★★☆
• Occult factor: ★★★★☆
• Symbolism: ★★★★☆

The Surrender is an allegory that uses a ritual to symbolize Megan’s feelings and perspective towards her parents and childhood. It reminds of the 2016 occult horror film A Dark Song, but the perceptive is different and also the storytelling and outcome differ. But the intention to do a ritual with sacrificing parts of yourself to evoke or raise something are similar.

It stars Colby Minifie, Kate Burton, Vaughn Armstrong, Neil Sandilands. It was directed and written by Julia Max, music by Alex Winkler and cinematography by Caitlin Yatsko.

Duration 96 minutes.

Plot

Megan has come home to help her mother Barbara to take care of her dying father Robert. The relationship between mother and daughter is strained and Barbara doesn’t seem to cope very well with the stress. Megan gets even more worried when she finds hex bags under her father’s bed and hears “rats” in the walls. 

Then Robert dies and Megan makes an even more frightening discovery. Her mother has called upon a man who can bring back the dead. Megan doesn’t approve but goes along with it to appease her mother. They have to do some rituals before the man gets there, like burn all Roberts dearest belongings, which Megan feels very bad about. While they clean up Roberts study, burn his things and cover all the mirrors, Megan sees shining yellow eyes in the mirrors. But when she looks behind her, there’s nothing.

When the man arrives, he doesn’t speak a word, examines them and Barbara gives him a bag full of money. All of her money. Megan doesn’t approve and wants this to stop, and wants to get the money back. Money she intended to use for a charity foundation to help children. But her mother refuses, everything is already set in motion and all she wants is Robert back. Megan asks her what she is going to do or going to live on if Robert indeed comes back to life. Barbara simply answers that it doesn’t matter.  Barbara is going through with it and Megan can’t leave her mother alone with this shady man. 

Then the ritual starts and it gets even worse than Megan could have ever imagined it to be. It’s emotionally and psychically a sacrifice. When something goes wrong the ritual turns into a nightmarish hell.

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Short Review

It’s a story about grief, about a dysfunctional family and about letting go. The film feels like an allegory about these themes and the ritual is a symbol to reach a very important conclusion. Megan’s thoughts about who her parents were, her father idolized and her mother somewhat demonized, she comes to realize that her perspective was incorrect. She only saw bits and pieces of her parents, not fully the truth about who they were as whole persons. Like her mother strikingly said that it’s easy to see and love the good parts but that the flaws mostly stay hidden, but that the spouse sees all of them and the worst parts of a person are mostly reserved for the spouse to see and experience. That’s a big revelation to Megan. 

While the ritual part of the film is less interesting or intriguing, and never explained, nor are the “rats” and the yellows eyes, the story focusses fully on the relationship between Megan and her mother and father and between Barbara and Robert. The ritual is a means to set these relationships on display for all of them to see, especially Megan. Even the Robert-thing has something else inside of him, which can be seen as a symbol of another personality trait Megan never saw. It’s her personal journey to let go of her childhood and the way she saw her parents. 

It does have some creepy scenes and a nightmarish trip into an unknown realm but it’s actually about grief. Grief isn’t just grieving those we’ve lost but also letting go of the image we had of them and embracing the truth and the person as a whole.