Surrogate

There’s rarely much original to report in the horror field; when there is, it’s usually worth making a big deal of. David Willing’s Surrogate is an Australian genre film that manages to dodge the tired clichés that cause jaded eye-rolls; landing somewhere between David Cronenberg’s The Brood and James Wan’s Malignant, this is a dark, dank but joltingly effective entry which makes something fresh of familiar female body-horror content.

Kestie Morassi, familiar from beach and buns soap Home and Away and also the gruelling Wolf Creek, plays Natalie Paxton; she’s a single mother to her kid Rose (Taysha Farrugia) and also a nurse who experiences a graphic phantom pregnancy. Without being pregnant in a recognisable form, she gives birth to…something, and the doctors are baffled in the aftermath. A creepy child-service agent called Lauren (Jane Badler, ingrained in pop culture consciousness as Diana from V) is suspicious that Natalie is hiding something, but what? And what might the bruises on her nine-year old daughter’s back signify? What has Natalie given birth to? Enter the mysterious older man Malcolm Akard (Matthew Crosby) and his young daughter Ava (Ellie Stewart) who might be able to help Natalie understand what she’s up against…

Co-written by Willing and Beth King, Surrogate plays with a loaded deck when it comes to imagery; don’t expect scary faces and jump scares, but do expect an unnerving experience. Surrogate deals with dark situations that derive their potency from real-life, but threads them into an elusive narrative that never quite tips us off to what the problem here is. There’s elements of 70’s horror and Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive, plus an séance scene involving positioned mirrors that’s extremely tense to watch, much like the children’s game in The Orphanage.

Good horror comes from a film that takes itself seriously, and Surrogate is a sombre but effective little chiller that can be recommended to genre fans. While there are a few rough edges in the production here, Surrogate’s rigorous focus on a mother-daughter relationship provides the cast with a chance to make Natalie’s horrific situation feel plausible; it’s a great showcase for Marassi, who lends some real gravitas to the narrative with an empathetic turn, and it’s also fun to see Badler in a different role from her 80’s iconic heyday. Overall, Surrogate is well worth seeking out; it’s a tight, admirably controlled film that packs a punch without ever quite explaining itself or resolving the considerable mystery generated.

https://www.surrogatefilm.com/