The Surrender
is a journey. It instantly drew me into the story as it centered on a mother-daughter relationship that was fraught long before the patriarch’s final days, the reason Megan (Colby Minifie) returns to her childhood home. Writer-director Julia Max creates a tense atmosphere that is ripe with conflict. There are supernatural elements to the story that bring the third act to its climax but the core is the relationship between Megan and her mother, Barbara (Kate Burton), who is resentful of her daughter even as she tries to protect her in her own way.
The Surrender tackles intergenerational trauma in its dissection of Megan and Barbara. The latter is adamant about caring for her ill husband, Robert (Vaughn Armstrong), who’s on death’s door. She feels needed whenever he calls out to her in pain. When Megan opts to watch her father for the night, Barbara, who we previously saw pulling out her hair, sits in her car and adds it to a long braid she keeps in a box.
…Max still manages to deliver an intriguing and, at times, deeply unsettling horror drama that doesn’t fully get our skin.
The film spends its first half oscillating between the characters caring for Robert and fighting with each other — about what to do for Robert’s morphine intake, the scholarship money he promised to give Megan’s program if the grant fell through, among other things. There’s clearly a lot of tension between the two, and Barbara is particularly bitter about Megan’s return. It’s as though Barbara is mad about the way Robert treated their daughter versus how he treated her and she takes it out on Megan. At the same time, Barbara’s relationship with Robert, which initially seems loving, takes a darker turn.
The Surrender Is Elevated By Colby Minifie’s Performance
Kate Burton Is Also Great
When Robert dies and Barbara tries resurrecting him, The Surrender truly gets twisted. The film is ultimately a meditation on grief and the ways in which trauma affects how the characters grieve. Barbara and Megan had very different relationships with Robert, and just how different is something Max’s script sheds light on later. The reveal comes a little too late in the film, though, and there could have been more time spent on fleshing out the characters and the layers of their dynamics, if only to give us and Megan more time to sit in the truth before trying to make peace with it.
The film is at its best when Megan and Barbara are verbally sparring. Their frustrations and fury are embedded into the narrative and the actors’ performances. Colby Minifie is especially good as she teeters between disbelief and care, fear and horror. We can tell that Megan’s emotional anchor was her father and dealing with her mother is not something she’s used to doing. While some of this is given to us through Megan’s conversations with her dad, Minifie’s portrayal conveys just as much. The elevated emotion and tension permeating the film are great, and they’re helped along by Minifie’s multidimensional performance.
Colby Minifie is especially good as she teeters between disbelief and care, fear and horror.
Kate Burton is equally good, though she has less to work with in terms of Barbara’s characterization. Still, she delivers a strong performance that’s laced with intrigue, sorrow and desperation that it’s hard not to feel bad for her even as I wanted to shake her. The dialogue here is expository enough while leaving room for nuance, and there’s enough eeriness baked into the plot that it’s easy to stay engaged throughout.
The Surrender’s Supernatural Finale Doesn’t Fully Work
The film’s primary issues lie in its supernatural moments, which are unsettling but actually take away from some of the tension between Megan and Barbara. We’re thrown into the deep end as Barbara recruits an unnamed man (Neil Sandilands) to perform the resurrection ritual and the film rushes to its ending and resolution before we’re able to settle into everything. This cuts short Megan’s own emotional journey towards understanding her and her mother’s trauma and relationship with each of her parents. It undermines a bit of what came before, though it doesn’t completely erase it.
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Despite the ending’s unearned moments, The Surrender has enough to be thoroughly engaging. Minifie and Burton are tremendous in a film that requires them to give more than they’re given. Their characters could have used a bit more work on the writing front, but Julia Max still manages to deliver an intriguing and, at times, deeply unsettling horror drama, albeit one that doesn’t fully get under our skin.
The Surrender premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
