The Surrender

Caring for their sick father, a woman and his wife try to make sure they're giving him the best chance at getting better which soon starts to take a toll on them both when he passes away and they begin a ritual to bring him back, leading them to a supernatural route they can't return from.

This was a troublesome and somewhat difficult genre effort. When this one works is based almost entirely around the final half, where the ritual is performed and the couple heads off into the other realm to continue their quest. The exploits of the specific ritual and how they're to follow the set of instructions as they do makes for a solid starting point already so that when they realize that part of the process is to go to the other side and retrieve the soul of their father to bring back with them provide not only a great series of visually-impressive tactics and rituals, but also getting off enough storyline motivations for the chilling storyline revelations. The scenes in the other realm, especially involving the naked figures shown suffering the deformed influence of the demonic figures controlling the dimension, create a series of encounters and emotional resolutions that make for a fun enough time here as this one goes along. There are some problems with this one keeping it down, though. The main aspect of this one tends to revolve around the continued usage and pronounced exploration of generational trauma and grieving between family members, which is inherently clichéd and just bland to sit through. The idea of going through the process of looking into the family history of their dead patriarch and trying to reconcile who he was and what their relationships with him were like carries on from the very beginning with the strained relationships at play between the two women who are there to help treat him at the time he needs it the most. This makes for a quite bland time here waiting around for this one to try offering up the kind of strained and fractured scenes bringing their emotions to the surface, the longer they stay there to perform the ritual, so everything here becomes a struggle to get invested in their emotionally draining quarrels. The other problem here is the bizarre series of general, troublesome motivations for how everything is supposed to go down. The initial setup of the family relationship being strained between the two women is enough to help us overlook how the whole turn to the spiritual goes from no build-up into the supernatural. This drops the mothers' descent into the mystical with rampant usage of occult practices and trinkets almost immediately, which is supposed to represent how little they know about each other, but comes off with little build-up or suspense. That carries on with why they need to carry out the process of bringing him back to life from the dead realm for no point, and that leaves everything with so little information that there are some problematic features with this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic violence, Graphic Language, and Brief Nudity.

Sometimes a movie night throws you a curveball, and this was one of those times. The crew-Willow, Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow-went in completely blind for The Surrender, thinking we were just in for another spooky horror ride. The only thing we knew? It had something to do with a ritual. Sounded promising, right? Well, it was... sort of.

The idea behind the film is honestly pretty captivating: a family ritual where you're asked to "surrender" to something beyond life-spiritual, emotional, and frighteningly real. That was enough to get all of us hooked early on. But when the movie dives deeper into this ritual, especially surrounding the death of the father, it starts raising the question: why not just let the man rest in peace? Still, we knew if that happened, there'd be no movie.

Things escalate fast when the supernatural elements kick in. It is a scary movie-no doubt about it. Tails literally tapped out mid-way through when the intensity cranked up (no spoilers, but it got wild). Willow, Knuckles, and Shadow were vibing with the thrills, but both Knuckles and Shadow called out the main character for being kind of weak in those monster scenes. They joked she could've taken them down with half the effort if she actually tried. Classic.

Amy, on the other hand, got pulled in deep once the ritual scenes started going dark. Like, real dark. She was tense throughout-especially when the blood came into play-and said the ritual arc was easily her favorite part, even if it creeped her out. Honestly, same.

But here's where the movie kind of lost all of us: the pacing and the emotional drama. There's a lot of back-and-forth between the two main characters, and while we get it's meant to show grief and trauma, it felt repetitive and dragged out. The emotional weight just didn't land like it should have. The story kind of stumbled in building the supernatural world, too-like, the ritual was cool, but why it happened and what it really meant? That part was foggy and undercooked.

By the time it wrapped up, we all agreed it was fun to experience together, especially in the dark with the volume up. It had moments-definitely creepy, visually strong at times-but as a full package, it didn't live up to what the concept deserved.

Final score from the crew: 4/10. Cool idea, scary at parts, but not quite the horror gem we hoped for.

There is something uncertain and magical in The Surrender as a mother and daughter struggle to manage as they face the dying of their husband and father. The metaphysical supernatural aspects made me ponder the notion of death in light of accepting this inevitability or fighting against letting go. In this aspect, the film is successful; the acting and direction set the scene well to contemplate this and ponder on this release.

The part that drew me away from this contemplation was the general annoyance of the two main characters. The mother and daughter fought, complained, bullied, capitulated, ruminated, and whined about each other for the present and the past. I once called put for the daughter to "Shut up!" even though I was annoyed at the mother for her inability to see past her own needs and desires. (The daughter was suggested to have her own purposes that were selfish as well.)

The family dynamics were a bit too dysfunctional for a clearer focus on grief and recovery. The extreme here lead me to think of a Greek tragedy, but the characters and the plot were too small to match that. Still, I left the film with a sense of having found my own way in grieving and glad I didn't need these extremes to find resolution in my own life.

I strongly believe this movie deserves at least 6/10. Reminds me a lot of 'A Dark Song', which I think is also hugely underrated.

Here's why I liked this movie: 1) Perfect cast and acting. I notice these things. This movie is mostly played by just 2 actresses - and they do a brilliant job. That mom character got me angry like 3 seconds into the movie - too realistic!

2) Great canonical setup. The atmoshere, the ritual, the 'other place' - nicely done!

3) No unreasonable dialogue, no dumb actions (unexplained that is), no childish behavior, story is not driven by some unreasonable or unbelievable desires.

4) Its not drawn-out. Pace is good.

5) Execution, operator work, little CGI, costumes, decorations - production quality is high. I say that considering that Shudder usually produces low budget movies, yet this visually looks on par with any other movies out there. Dare I say it, nowadays many even 50million+ movies tend to look awful, unprofessional. This one on the contrary - delivers quality where it matters. Picture is simply pleasant to watch.

6) Drama is real, life-like, a tragedy, definetely comes from someone who experienced it, otherwise I don't know how they got it to be so precise.

Obviously there are also weak parts: 1) Story. The end is too abrupt. While it leaves room for speculation, it lacks build up, it lacks proper culmination, it lacks revelation. All these things could've been there with just a little push.

2) Horror. I get the grief, I get the manifestation, I know, this story is probably less about plain horror and more about one person's tragedy, and the drama surrounding it, but I'm just such a fan of a horror, I really want some detail to that part too, I want the theme to be explored and/or at least some clues to what exactly is happening. Yeah...

Overall, I was REALLY pleasently surprised.

This movie resonated with me.

But then a bit dissappointed too, I guess.

I understand the pain, all the pain in this one - I can understand all of it to it's depth - and its brilliantly portrayed.

But yet you've also made an attempt to involve more than that into this movie - a horror, a devil, an another world - and I was hoping for more of that. And I was also hoping for a resolution that wouldn't be so silent. The clearly was some room for that, why didn't it happen?!

"The Surrender" was not a movie that I was familiar with prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2025. So I didn't know what I was in for, aside from it being a supernatural horror movie. And given my lov of all things horror, of course I had to check it out and give it a fair chance.

The storyline, while there was potential, proved dull and uneventful. And when things actually started to happen, the movie abruptly ended. So I can't claim that writer Julia Max, whom also directed the movie, delivered a particularly entertaining or enjoyable script for the movie.

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, aside from leading actresses Colby Minifie and Kate Burton. The acting performances in the movie were fair, despite the fact that the script proved to be a dud.

There was an excessive amount of screaming, crying, and calling out for dad throughout the course of the movie, almost to the point where it was too much and started to ruin the movie.

The effects in the movie were okay, but there wasn't an abundance of special effects to be enjoyed.

"The Surrender" was a strange movie, and it didn't particularly entertain me all that much. I actually dozed off twice along the way, as the narrative was a swing and a miss. It was more of a mother/daughter drama than it was a horror movie. If you sit down to watch "The Surrender" with the hopes of a horror movie, like I did, you'll be sorely disappointed.

This is definitely not a movie that will grace my screen a second time, as it was a struggle to watch it the first time around.

My rating of writer and director Julia Max's 2025 movie "The Surrender" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars.