“Witch hunt” has become such an overused phrase, especially by disgraced politicians with bad comb-overs, that it’s easy to pass off the term’s sobering real-life origins as something of the past. Indeed, the Salem Witch Trials occurred in the late 1600’s, but those practices and superstitions continue to persist, often weaponized as a form of gendered violence to suppress and destabilize those, especially women, who resist the societal norm. Nightsiren, a Slovakian import from director Tereza Nvotová, begins with text informing us that: “even in modern Europe, in certain lonely villages, folklore and medieval superstition are still considered a way of life.” Contemporary science and technology can’t change the fact that, when something goes wrong, people will always look for something–or someone–to blame.
An eerie, folk horror-adjacent drama drenched in the bleak, eternally grey atmosphere of the Slovakian wilderness, Nightsiren begins as a young woman, Sarlota (Natalia Germani) reluctantly returns to the tiny, remote village where she spent her early years. A brief prologue hints at Sarlota’s tortured past, and a traumatic incident that caused her to run away, only to be beckoned home by a mysterious letter to inherit her late mother’s assets. Sarlota’s return is met with air of quiet (and unquiet) violence from the surrounding townsfolk, in part because many of the villagers suspect her mother of having been a witch, and harbor the same unjustified suspicions about her daughter. Answers are in short supply, such as to why Sarlota’s mother’s house was burned down, or the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of her younger sister, who fell into a ravine when they were children. Only Mira (Eva Mores), a free-spirited and iconoclastic young woman, seems willing to help Sarlota’s case, and the two quickly form an intense, almost spiritual bond.
The trope of the creepy peasant, often overcome with superstition to the point of perpetuating violence, has long been a mainstay of the “folk horror” genre, popularized by Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man and continuing with recent films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar. This is not one of those movies. Superstition does, in part, inform the heinous acts that a handful of the downtrodden village’s residents will later commit, but Nvotová, who co-wrote the screenplay with Barbora Namerova, is aiming for something decidedly thornier and more tangible.
Nightsiren is largely a film about the perpetuation of cultural misogyny, passed down from generation to generation like an ever-evolving virus. It becomes obvious early on that the “witches” of Sarlota’s hometown are simply women who went against the grain, resisting the sexual and submissive expectations laid upon them by the men in the community, themselves poisoned by the omnipresent generational expectations of masculine domination. As such, accusing someone of being a “witch” becomes a form of perverse retribution, engaged in both by these men and the women who have internalized such abuse themselves. Anything supernatural is more or less in the character’s heads.
All this to say that Nightsiren isn’t a particularly fun watch, but it is a consistently compelling one. The performances are excellent across the board, especially Germani and Mores. Their often-sweet, if tenuous relationship, is the sole bright spot in an otherwise gloomy film, painting a convincing portrayal of sisterhood in the face of an increasingly unwelcoming environment. At only an hour and 46 minutes (though split into seven distinct chapters – making the film feel longer than it is), Nvotová and Namerova’s screenplay packs in a surprising amount of twists and turns. Some of these reveals work better than others, and a particularly important plot reveal towards the beginning of the third act heavily strains credulity. By keeping so much character information hidden from the audience, the film occasionally risks being more confusing than enlightening, especially problematic as the story veers towards an unwieldly and disjointed final third that leaves several strands hanging to frankly befuddling effect. It’s one thing to end a film ambiguously, but the abruptness of Nightsiren’s conclusion feels both underwhelming and needlessly morose.
As unremitting as the narrative may be, Nightsiren is frequently gorgeous. Cinematographer Federico Cesca shoots predominantly handheld, lending a gritty, palpable reality to the character’s sometimes mystical surrounds. On occasion, though, the film dips wonderfully into the surreal, notably during an extended sequence involving a bonfire dance that veers precipitously from eroticism towards something resembling cosmic horror. The result is a piece of cinema that’s hard to define. It’s only a horror movie as much as the reality it portrays is horrific, but it nevertheless engages with much of the eerie, mystifying imagery that has made folk horror so alluring as a subgenre. Audiences may be reminded of Robert Eggers’s The Witch, a more distinct and ultimately stronger film that engages with similar themes, but Nvotová’s film carries an unsettling power all of its own. The movie is not just entrenched in, but often directly engaged with the understanding of natural properties that the villagers demonize in Sarlota, her mother and Mira. The power to connect with nature is not a symbol of evil but of understanding and freedom. Beneath the desolate exterior, there is also beauty waiting to be found.
Photo courtesy of Breaking Glass Pictures
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