EBERT: The Surrender - Review and Trailer

There are essentially three paths available to a horror movie like “The Surrender,” about a grieving mother and daughter who try to resurrect a dead loved one. It can be a character-driven drama that’s less conventional and more unusually paced and plotted than you might expect. It can also be a surreal practical/makeup/gore effects showcase, as you might hope given the movie’s unnerving opening image of a pale naked figure, with bone fragments and bloody lesions sticking out of their back, hunched over a human body. That is definitely one way to grab viewers’ attention.

The third way forward, an unsteady straddling of the two other paths, is ultimately the right one for “The Surrender.” The movie’s unexpected conclusion is the clearest indicator that you’re watching an eerie and accomplished gut-muncher that also happens to have grief and mother-daughter trauma on its mind. It’s an unusual combination of moods, but “The Surrender” still charges from one emotional register to the other and back again until it comes to a sudden, but complete stop.

Editing by Sushila Love.

Read the rest here.

Watch the trailer here.

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