"She Will" showcases marvelous Alice Krige in gothic mood piece

She Will (2022)

Oh, she will, and she does. In the darkly dreamlike “She Will,” the “she” in question is fading actress Veronica Ghent, played to seething perfection by the marvelously ethereal Alice Krige (2020's "Gretel & Hansel"). Not only a juicy performance showcase for Krige, the film equally stands as a transfixing calling card for filmmaker Charlotte Colbert, a sculptor and photographer who makes her feature directorial debut. The fact that Italian horror master Dario Argento is an executive producer (he “presents”) also doesn’t hurt the film’s confidence. 

Following a double mastectomy, Veronica holds in a lot of pain — she’s brittle, demanding, headstrong, and stuck in her ways. With the accompaniment of personal nurse Desi (Kota Eberhardt), she travels by train to a retreat in the Scottish Highlands. She expects it to be a solitary stay, but upon arrival, Veronica is irritated to discover that the main house is filled with obnoxious artists (particularly a smarmy “feminist” played by Rupert Everett). This situation alone is already a nightmare for her. It’s not long before Veronica and Desi are set up in their own private cottage that Veronica begins having lucid dreams. She forms a connection with the land and nature but also must dig into her trauma involving her director, Eric Hathbourne (Malcolm McDowell, in skeevy form), with whom she had a “special bond” at only 13. This trauma comes back as Hathbourne is back in the media, recasting Veronica and working on a remake/sequel to her big break, “Navajo Frontier.” Perhaps Veronica can, with a little help from the history of the Highlands, take back her power. 

Co-written by director Charlotte Colbert and writer Kitty Percy, “She Will” is an intoxicating gothic mood piece, unfolding deliberately but vividly placing one into a hazy headspace. While the film could be all about its atmosphere, everything feels heightened in its tangibility. The beautifully lush area in which Veronica and Desi find themselves is steeped in history when women were tried and burned to death for practicing witchcraft. The meaning of the land is bleak and tragic, where women were at the hands of cruelty, but director Colbert and cinematographer Jamie Ramsay really bring an elegant and tactile nature to every frame with some truly stunning camerawork (fans of “A Cure for Wellness” and all of its visual splendor will recognize a very similar shot aboard the Landwasser Viaduct train).

The sound design is also tremendously immersive. If you’ve watched “Stranger Things” on your TV with the closed captioning on, you’re probably used to reading the descriptive onomatopoeia (i.e. “squelching wetly”). Well, here there’s a lot of squelching of feet stepping into mud, or some gory black goo, and you can almost feel it yourself. When the imagery itself isn’t coming to sonic life, there’s the haunting score by Clint Mansell (and there’s a really cool cover of “The Killing Moon” by French band Nouvelle Vague during the end credits).

If it seems like “She Will” is more concerned with atmospherics than anything else, that’s not entirely true. Krige is used to playing fearsome figures, and she is certainly chilling as Veronica but also nakedly vulnerable. As Desi, Kota Eberhardt holds her own next to Krige, and she even brings credence to the line, “It’s like I’m losing touch with reality.” The story itself is rather simple and reliant on dream logic, but Veronica and Desi’s dynamic is the most fascinating element, beginning with friction and then developing into a more compassionate sisterhood. “She Will” is more thematically loaded than it is plot-driven, but it will find value among women of a certain age who can say, “me too.”

Grade: B

IFC Midnight is releasing “She Will” (95 min.) in select theaters on July 15, 2022.