PINNLAND EMPIRE: A FEW MORE WORDS ON THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER *UPDATED*

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

A FEW MORE WORDS ON THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER UPDATED

The Haunting /
The Eternal Daughter

Now that the year has basically come to an end I can safely say that Joanna Hogg’s Eternal Daughter is one of my favorite films of the year (along with Crimes Of The Future, Brainwashed & The Banshees Of Inisherin).

I posted my initial thoughts a few months ago (click here to read) but the film has stayed with me since October (something I can't say about the majority of the stuff I've seen this year).

Joanna Hogg has been very open about her influences (Night Of The Demon, The Shining, the films of Chantal Akerman etc). We looked at a lot of these influences in my original review but Hogg's love for Robert Wise’s The Haunting really shows more than any other film in my opinion.

there's The Haunting, obviously, which is an incredibly frightening film, so I did dare to look at that again before making this - Joanna Hogg, letterboxd

The Eternal Daughter has been categorized by some as a horror film when it's really a ghost story. There are horror films and there are ghost stories. Often times the two have a venn diagram-like crossover but not in the case of The Eternal Daughter. This is a ghost story. I guess if you want to categorize this as a horror story then it’s a horror story without any of the jump scares (or any traditional scares for that matter).

The Haunting / The Eternal Daughter

Visually, The Eternal Daughter is like The Haunting without any of those chaotic moments. From the opening scenes in both films where we travel to the haunted inn right up until check in…