Holly rings her school to tell them she is staying at home. She isn’t sick. She just can’t bring herself to go. “Bad things are going to happen today,” she says just above a whisper, her voice cracking.
But bad things happen to Holly most days; she is bullied constantly, little jibes from girls who say she smells or classmates who go through elaborate efforts not to touch “the witch,” as they call her. It is hard to see why. The central character in Holly is just the designated victim, as she will soon become a designated savior. Two ends of the same straw, each tormenting in their own way.
She is right about that bad day. A fire breaks out in the school. Ten people die. In the face of such heartbreak, there is not much discussion of...
But bad things happen to Holly most days; she is bullied constantly, little jibes from girls who say she smells or classmates who go through elaborate efforts not to touch “the witch,” as they call her. It is hard to see why. The central character in Holly is just the designated victim, as she will soon become a designated savior. Two ends of the same straw, each tormenting in their own way.
She is right about that bad day. A fire breaks out in the school. Ten people die. In the face of such heartbreak, there is not much discussion of...
- 9/9/2023
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
Holly, a 15-year-old girl, appears to develop clairvoyance and magical healing powers — or does she? — in Belgian director Fien Troch’s intriguing, ambiguous fifth feature, Holly. Anchored by a charismatic yet impressively subtle lead performance by Cathalina Geeraerts, the film flirts with different genres, and at various stages looks poised to emerge as a teen-themed horror show like Carrie or a didactic dramatization of the evils of bullying. Ultimately it ends up being neither of those things and evolves into a sly black comedy about the impossibility of truly unselfish altruism.
That tonal complexity may make it a little harder to love for audiences who crave easy answers, rootable-for characters and cut-and-dry moral dilemmas, but this should find its own niche on the festival circuit and beyond.
In a suburban Belgian town where Flemish is the more dominant language, Holly lives with her alcoholic mother (Els Deceukilier) and sister Dawn...
That tonal complexity may make it a little harder to love for audiences who crave easy answers, rootable-for characters and cut-and-dry moral dilemmas, but this should find its own niche on the festival circuit and beyond.
In a suburban Belgian town where Flemish is the more dominant language, Holly lives with her alcoholic mother (Els Deceukilier) and sister Dawn...
- 9/9/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It’s been said that Stephen King’s first novel “Carrie” filled him with such self-doubt that its notes, drafts, and even eventual manuscript were nearly thrown out by the author, condemned into eternal obscurity. Were it not for King’s own wife, the tale of a bullied telekinetic teen with an abusive puritanical mother would have ended up permanently in the trash, unable to stand alone as a wonderful work or inspire other stories of its ilk.
Consider Fien Troch’s “Holly.” The new film suggests that our eponymous young, bullied high-schooler might end up in the midst of a similar cathartic orgy of violence as Carrie, disposed of with little regard for her value. But unlike “Carrie” (and Carrie) “Holly” doesn’t gift her audience with the catharsis of all those horrible high school alpha bullies ending up in a pile of bone and charred sinew.
Holly (Cathalina Geeraerts) is an outcast too,...
Consider Fien Troch’s “Holly.” The new film suggests that our eponymous young, bullied high-schooler might end up in the midst of a similar cathartic orgy of violence as Carrie, disposed of with little regard for her value. But unlike “Carrie” (and Carrie) “Holly” doesn’t gift her audience with the catharsis of all those horrible high school alpha bullies ending up in a pile of bone and charred sinew.
Holly (Cathalina Geeraerts) is an outcast too,...
- 9/7/2023
- by Leila Latif
- Indiewire
When Holly’s classroom peers call her “the witch,” she meekly shrugs it off. It’s not the least flattering slur with which the shy, soft-spoken 15-year-old has been bullied, and it beats people complaining about how she smells. It even may, at a certain level, be true. When Holly’s seemingly psychic abilities save her from a fatal disaster at school, her status in the community shifts from outcast to otherworldly icon — as if Carrie White had actually been crowned prom queen, and not bucketed with blood. Stephen King’s antiheroine comes to mind more than once in Fien Troch’s elusive, intriguing teen drama “Holly,” which plays a little like his story stripped of any outright horror, and only the everyday vanities and failings of humanity in its place.
Still, as a portrait of our collective ability to exploit and destroy any precious resource — human or otherwise, real...
Still, as a portrait of our collective ability to exploit and destroy any precious resource — human or otherwise, real...
- 9/7/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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