Generational trauma manifests as a deadly creepy crawler in Tim Riedel’s debut feature, Ancestral Beasts, which just celebrated its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia. Set among the indigenous Métis community, the film is a glowing reminder of the festival’s commitment to not only Canadian film, but specifically indigenous films and filmmakers.
Elyse Poitras (Morgan Holmstrom) is going through a real rough patch. The sudden and shocking loss of her mother amplified an already tense relationship with her toxic sister, Nikki (Darla Contois), sending Elyse running back to her family’s rural home, a place she hadn’t laid eyes on in years. What was intended to be a healing respite from the pressures of her new life turns sour when she discovers that she’s not the only one living in the house, there’s a creature beneath the floorboards, and it knows and feeds on her pain.
Ancestral Beasts is kind of like the horror-themed inverse of all of those Hallmark Christmas movies, rather than a woman returning to her rural home from the big city and finding love in the place she’s abandoned, Elyse returns to her roots expecting to find calm and instead she is confronted with the deep wounds in her family’s past. Her late mother was a pariah; talked about like she was the town’s “crazy old lady”, and her death seemed inevitable to everyone but Elyse. She immediately runs into several cousins and childhood friends, and there is a hint that romance might be on the horizon – a charming Cody, played by Asivak Koostachin, but even that turns sour when she has trouble grappling with a past that has never been resolved.
Riedel’s script, crafted with indigenous elders, mental health professionals, and knowledge keepers, is broadly relatable, while retaining a specificity to the Indigenous communities being represented. There’s a kind of intense, complex family bond in the town that seems intrinsic to the lived experiences of Métis and other communities. As with any family, there are problems, but they often hold them close to the vest, which in this case causes them to fester and explode in unexpected and deadly ways.
The success of Ancestral Beasts is placed firmly on Holmstrom’s shoulders, as the sole lead she’s in nearly every scene, and she it put through the ringer. She steps up to meet the demands of the role nobly, swinging from emotionally frail to terrified to determined to heroic, sometimes within a single scene. Her supporting cast struggles a bit to meet her at her level, but with a film a focused on a single character, it’s not too much of a problem.
As the film’s themes begin to materialize into actual creature horror, Ancestral Beasts wavers a little bit, but this is a case where taste may play a part in how much a viewer buys in. The creature in question is a centipede-type monster, and the design didn’t really work for me. While I truly appreciate the film’s commitment to using practical effects, this felt a bit unfinished. In a film that is attempting to confront its ideas with a very serious tone, any misstep can break the illusion, and while the creature didn’t sink the Ancestral Beasts for me, it certainly broke the spell on a couple of occasions.
Thankfully for Ancestral Beasts, Morgan Holmstrom’s powerful lead performance holds the film together in a way that its foibles can be forgiven. This is a strong film, with strong ideas that just fumbles a few details but still manages to make its point and deliver on its promise. Chalk up another win for Canadian indigenous horror, Ancestral Beasts is definitely worth checking out.