‘Her Will Be Done’ review: A young woman faces an ancient evil in rural French horror

Dir/scr: Julia Kowalski. France/Poland. 2025. 98mins

Purification requires sacrifice in Her Will Be Finished, a murky rural horror wherein a younger girl Is determined to flee the drudgery of her present life and the sinister affect of her bloodline. Julia Kowalski’s lengthy awaited second function is an atmospheric however overwrought mixture of lurid imaginings and small city prejudice that may entice style followers drawn to extra offbeat fare.

 Atmospheric however overwrought

It’s 10 years since Kowalski’s debut function Raging Rose was a part of the ACID picks at Cannes. Now, her second function expands on themes explored in her quick I Noticed The Face Of The Satan (2023) and reunites her with that movie’s lead Maria Wrobel. Right here, Wrobel performs Nawojka (often known as Naw), a younger girl dwelling on a small French farm together with her Polish father Henryck (Wojciech Skibinski) and brothers Tomek (Przemyslaw Przestrzeiski) and Bogdan (Kuba Dyniewicz).

Downtrodden and dowdy, Naw exists to wash, cook dinner, organise and be the butt of limitless jokes. Her ambition to review veterinary drugs isn’t taken significantly. There’s little nuance to brothers who’re depicted as repellent boors, whose each thoughtless demand makes us extra sympathetic to Naw’s plight. Her kindly father’s best concern is that she may end up like her late mom, who was possessed by evil. Is his concern simply one other type of management? Day by day prayers and the sporting of a Saint Benedict medallion are a part of the safety towards her destiny.

Her Will Be Finished unfolds in waterlogged fields, deserted sheds and mucky barns, with a gallery of native residents to rival the worlds of Bruno Dumont or Alain Giraudie. This can be a backwater populated by predatory males and narrow-minded ladies. Cinematographer Simon Beaufils lends the movie the grainy look of a Seventies function, utilising a muddy color palette interspersed with using purple.

If Naw is a latter-day Cinderella, then her Prince Charming may develop into Sandra (Roxane Mesquida, channelling Beatrice Dalle), a sultry dangerous woman who returns to the world to get rid of her household dwelling. Decked out in a leg brace, leather-based jacket and cut-offs, she is each inch a femme fatale, from the cigarette dangling from her lips to the contempt for anybody who challenges her.

Kowalski units up all types of expectations, from a harmful liaison between the 2 ladies to an Exorcist-style tussle between good and evil for the soul of Naw. The result’s by no means fairly that simple, muddied by the truth that transient flashbacks present solely passing perception into how historical past could also be repeating, and that we all know little of the occasions which have made Sandra such an outcast.

We do see, nevertheless, the livestock falling sufferer to a mysterious ailment that manifests itself in fields speckled with icky deposits that seem like patches of discoloured membrane. We additionally know the way Naw suffers as she makes an attempt to combat off possession by her mom’s spirit. Wrobel provides a dedicated efficiency that expresses Naw’s torments with an intense physicality, grimacing, drooling, screaming and distorting her physique. She contrasts that with a placid, bug-eyed stare as she lapses into trances that may really feel just like the lull earlier than the storm. Wrobel’s dedication to the character helps unify the disparate storylines in what emerges as a story of transgressive ladies in unwelcoming locations, and what it takes to outlive.