 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Nightsiren (aka Svetlonoc) • Year: 2022 • Country: Slovakia, Czech Republic • Director: Tereza Nvotová • Main cast: Natalia Germani, Eva Mores, Juliana Olhová, Iva Bittová, Jana Olhová, Marek Geisberg • Runtime: 106 minutes • Production company: Bfilm, Moloko Film • TRAILER
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The Slavic countries have always had a big tradition in dark and horror tales and myths. Not in vain, the Baba Yaga has its origins in Slavic folklore, and even to this day some rural towns still embrace the superstitions and traditions that ruled the creed centuries ago. A mix of old-fashioned heritage and blindfolded Christianity can lead many people to still fear of witches, enchantments, curses, and even act in atrocious ways towards the ones appointed as a threat to the community. And this is the main theme that sustains the drama and folk-horror movie Nightsiren (2022).
Filmed in location in a rural town in the middle of nowhere in Slovakia, surrounded by the beautiful mountains and with the villagers living a life based on farming, religious devotion, and a series of traditions that might seem not to have a place in the eyes of the modern times, the movie tells the story of two young women, Šarlota and Mira, who at first seem to be complete strangers but soon they realize they have much more in common than they expected. Both of them find themselves in the middle of that town, feeling like complete strangers in the eyes of the villagers who never accept them despite their heritage. But the two girls can neither accept the living and traditions of those villagers. The clash of the two sides of ethics is inevitable.
As Robert Eggers portrays in his cult film The Witch (2015), here the co-writer and director Tereza Nvotová questions those rural attitudes in a story that explores the characters’s feminity, sense of heritage, and rejection of ancestry behaving. Both emotional and sensitive, Nightsiren (2022) is closer to the forms of a drama than a terrifying horror, but it swims in both waters perfectly. A denunciation of the misogyny of the old times, in an environment where a woman thinking out of the ordinary is called a witch and, therefore, a menace for the community that must be sacrificed, the movie depicts the behaving of the mob of villagers that seem to be completely out of place nowadays but, on the other side, doesn’t surprise to exist; and you don’t have to go to a remote village to meet people who think and act like primitive folk. Religion and medieval traditions can be very dangerous things in the hands of the ignorant flock.
Despite the slow pace, where most of the early running time of the film is used to explore the blooming relationship between Šarlota and Mira and how they interact with the rest of the villagers, the movie becomes an intense watch where the sense of conflict and the tension of knowing a violent outcome is almost a certain thing. Not the brutal and terrifying folk-horror movie that one could at first expect, but the elements are always there. More delicate than explicit, Nightsiren (2022) is an experience that certainly gives you a reason to think about who we are as a society, from where we come, what we are now, what we’re doing right, and what we should change in the name of harmony and good co-living with each other.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10334222
