‘The Surrender’ Is A Harrowing Yet Familiar Look At The Hells of Grief [SXSW 2025 Review]
The toxic codependency and antagonistic relationships between a mother and daughter have been the subject of horror stories for centuries. Examining the horrors of such a relationship isn’t new to the genre, especially recently with a new wave of films that dive deep into intergenerational trauma and its horrific impacts on generations. With her feature film debut The Surrender, which had its world premiere at SXSW 2025, writer and director Julia Max creates her own entry into that wave, but one that’s steeped with more empathy than previous entries, portraying a more complex mother-daughter relationship in the face of overwhelming grief.
Colby Minifie (The Boys) plays Megan, a young woman living at home and helping her mother Barbara (Kate Burton, Grey’s Anatomy) take care of their dying father and husband, Robert (Vaughn Armstrong). They’re counting down the days before he passes, feeding him morphine for the pain and monitoring his vitals. As they follow elaborate spreadsheets of medications, Megan and Barbara bicker and apologize in the same breath, simultaneously resentful and grateful in the wake of impending death.
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Max makes the smart choice of showing life while caretaking for a sick parent and spouse before his death to establish the exhaustion in their bones and the rapidly fraying relationship that wasn’t that stable to begin with. Minifie and Burton spar like a true daughter and mother, their quips feeling personal and venomous at times. It’s one of the most honest portrayals of an adult mother-daughter relationship I’ve ever seen in a horror movie, which is refreshing in a genre that loves to vilify the maternal.
Then, in the wake of Robert’s death, Barbara reveals that she’s spent every last cent of her life savings and 401k to pay a man to resurrect her dead husband. She’s been planning for weeks, hanging crystals around the house, destroying all of Robert’s belongings, and putting bundles of human teeth under the bed. Now, it’s time to truly start the ritual. Megan begs her to stop this, to get her head on straight, but to no avail. So, she reluctantly follows her mom down an unstoppable path, clinging to her side, terrified to leave her alone.
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The Surrender feels like it could be a stage play, a single-location nightmare that plays with space in creative ways while never really leaving the space. As the ritual unfolds and gets even more violent, Max warps the sense of space with creative lighting executed by a team led by cinematographer Cailin Yatsko. The film begins beautifully bright in a house full of light even in the face of metaphorical darkness. The sun is always shining almost too brightly as Megan runs outside to sneak a cigarette or to sprint to a local park to scream into the forest. But as things begin to shift, the light is snuffed out, replaced by a small circle basked in dim candlelight.
This is definitely a slow burn, but a well-crafted one with well-established emotional stakes and a shocking and surreal payoff. Even while Robert is still alive, Max and Yatsko fill each frame with a creeping dread both around an impending death and something else lurking in the shadows. Think a sun-soaked The Dark And The Wicked meets folk horror traditions where nothing ever feels safe no matter how beautiful the weather or how bright the sunshine.
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When the ritual takes a nasty turn, the film’s tone rapidly shifts into something a bit too on the nose and familiar, moving from its more unique perspective at the beginning into the expected intergenerational trauma horror beats. It by no means sinks the film, especially thanks to Minifie and Burton’s performances. But it’s still a jarring transition into too-familiar territory. That being said, The Surrender does mark a shift in contemporary horror, I think, towards a growing empathy and complexity to parental relationships. It doesn’t detract from the story, but rather helps it from falling into stereotypes and helps it stand out amongst a growing indie horror scene.
With a promising start and a story that feels like a combination of A Dark Song and Talk To Me, The Surrender is a surprisingly empathetic entry in the intergenerational trauma horror category. While parts of it feel derivative of previous meditations on grief, two strong central performances, and Max’s script keep The Surrender feeling fresh in a tired subgenre. It captures the existential dread and pain of clawing your way out of the familial trauma you were born and thrust into, an inescapable fate that you can only power through and try to survive. It’s not an easy watch, but if you can stomach it, it is a beautiful one.
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The Surrender (2025)
Summary
With a promising start and a story that feels like a combination of A Dark Song and Talk To Me, The Surrender is a surprisingly empathetic entry in the intergenerational trauma horror category.
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