‘The Surrender’ Review: Julia Max Explores Grief And Loss In A Bloody Supernatural Horror – SXSW

deadline.com:

Female-facing horror finds a striking new voice in Julia Max, making her feature debut at SXSW with The Surrender, which, if you can accept the interpretation of David Cronenberg’s The Brood as his idea of a body-horror Kramer Vs Kramer, functions similarly as a bloody genre reworking of Postcards from the Edge.

Notionally, it’s a film about grief and how the death of a father reverberates around a tight-knit family that has drifted apart.

Max handles that very well, but the real meat is in the story of a mother and daughter who find that his sudden absence opens up a whole other can of worms.

To keep you on your toes, Max opens the film with a bang; following a trail of blood on what looks to be floor of a cave or crypt, the camera finds a frightening demonic creature gnawing away at a human body.