When teenagers move to the countryside from the city, it usually leads to resentment. That’s also the case for 15 year old Emerson, who moves to a religious backwater village on the edge of the Canadian wilderness with her family. Rural life doesn’t turn out to be especially idyllic, shortly after her arrival a classmate of hers turns up dead in the forest. A wild animal attack, the community assumes, due to the state of the corpse, and the local men get armed. After a creepy encounter in the forest, Emerson becomes certain that it wasn’t a mountain lion that killed Rebecca, but a real monster – and she isn’t the only one who saw the creature. Because adults don’t believe in monsters, the teens are forced to help themselves. Inspired by a comic about Scythians, Emerson and her new friends connect to their darker side in order to kill the monster. But the occult rituals soon get out of hand.

Director and screenwriter C. May Borgstrom relies on a mix of horror, thriller, and coming-of-age story in SPIRIT IN THE BLOOD. Told from the perspective of a girl gang, the Canadian-German production not only touches on the conflict between the teen and adult worlds, but also on topics such as gender roles and (patriarchal) authority. The characters aren’t surprising. There’s nerdy, rebellious Emerson, the precocious and poorer Delilah (in THE CRAFT aesthetic), and the childish, sheltered baby. However, Borgstrom creates beautiful, typical, indie film images, with a lot of backlight and handheld cameras and so, also thanks to the cast, an atmospheric and thrilling game about realities and self-empowerment emerges.

Clarissa Lempp (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy