Review: 'The Eternal Daughter' is Emotionally Haunting

We see a car driving at night along a dark, fog-covered road in what looks like the middle of nowhere. An elderly woman sits in the car, while her daughter listens to the driver tell a story about an apparition that haunts the location they're heading to. They arrive at a hotel, a former estate in the Welsh countryside, where the mother used to visit when she was a child. The trip turns out to be the daughter's idea for her mother's birthday, but also an opportunity to work on the screenplay for her next film, which happens to be about her mother.

That's the set-up of Joanna Hogg's "The Eternal Daughter," which follows her two autobiographical "The Souvenir" films, released in 2019 and 2021, respectively. The film was shot in secret during a COVID-19 lockdown; Hogg takes the restrictions placed upon her by the pandemic and leans into the genre of gothic horror, which tends to benefit more with less. There's no greater example of that here than the two central roles, in which both mother and daughter are played by Tilda Swinton. What may seem like a gimmick, or a workaround to have one less body on set, turns out to fit in perfectly with the film's ideas around mother-daughter relationships and how they reflect and refract off of each other.

It's no surprise that Swinton, who's taken on multiple roles in the past, makes her challenging parts look easy. After starring in Hogg's 1986 graduation film "Caprice," Swinton didn't work with her again until "The Souvenir," over three decades later, and the reunion has doubled into an exciting new chapter for her career. After years of playing eccentric roles in films like "Snowpiercer," "Doctor Strange," and "Suspiria," Hogg's style of ultra-precise naturalism has brought Swinton back down to earth without compromising on her penchant for doing more than the average actor (and, of course, making sure all that effort shows on screen). Both mother and daughter have distinctive differences, and Hogg's narrative opens up the performances which transform as well. Swinton takes on the task without ever breaking the film's fine-tuned atmosphere.

The same goes for the rest of the cast, which is comprised of three terrific supporting performances: The hotel receptionist (Carly Sophia-Davies), whose inability to hide how much she hates her job provides just the right amount of levity; caretaker Bill (Joseph Mydell), a widower with a kindness and warmth to him that also brings the core themes to the forefront; and Louis, Swinton's real-life dog, who plays the mother's companion with an expressiveness that justifies him getting his own credit.

All four performers come together to bring Hogg's ghost story to life, which like all great ghost stories, is never just about phantoms and specters. This is a film that's haunted by very real emotions, like the dependencies we form with our parents, the gulf between what we know about them and what we don't, and the inevitable point where we have to prepare for a world without them. Hogg lets her film take on the shape of familiar gothic tales, then gradually peels back the surface to reveal a complex, human, and tragic center. You may start "The Eternal Daughter" expecting to be scared, but by the end you'll come out of it moved in ways you'd never expect.

"The Eternal Daughter" is now playing in theaters and on demand.