The Eternal Daughter review – two parts Hammer, one part Tales of the Unexpected

The threads that bind this atmospheric drama from Joanna Hogg to her previous two films might not be as tightly woven as those that link the two chapters of The Souvenir, but they are there nonetheless. Tilda Swinton plays two characters. She reprises her role from The Souvenir: Rosalind, the mother of aspiring film-maker Julie (played in The Souvenir by Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne). She also takes on the role of Julie, now in late middle age and fluttering breathlessly around her frail, elderly mother during a weekend break to a seemingly deserted country house hotel. Swathed in dry ice and surrounded by the bony, pointing fingers of the bare winter tree branches, the gothic mansion looks like a cover illustration on a paperback edition of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. And with an eerie, plaintive woodwind motif in the score and sound design that emphasises every arthritic architectural grumble, Hogg leans into the influence of British supernatural storytelling – it’s two parts Hammer, one part Tales of the Unexpected.