It Is In Us All Review: Antonia Campbell-Hughes Delivers Grim, Focused Debut [SXSW]
It Is in Us All, Antonia Campbell-Hughes’ directorial feature debut, death is constantly closing in. Near-death experiences can change the way a person sees their life, and that is heavily apparent throughout the film, a moody, existential, if somewhat cold and distant feature that sits comfortably in the unsettling emotions that haunt the lead character. Nuanced yet ambiguous, and imbued with raw emotion and care, Campbell-Hughes crafts a worthwhile story that digs into the aftermath of a near-death experience.
Hamish Considine (Cosmo Jarvis) — a London businessman on his way to see his aunt’s house for the first time in the small, remote Ireland town of Donegal — is faced with an existential crisis after he's involved in a car accident that kills 15-year-old Callum. While it seems like the accident doesn’t greatly affect him internally, things change when he befriends 17-year-old Evan (Rhys Mannion), Callum’s friend who was actually in the driver’s seat when he and Hamish crashed into each other. Hamish is drawn closer to his deceased mother’s home and to Evan, who is the only other person in town capable of knowing the feelings of unease and the struggle to move on after coming so close to death.
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How do people handle near-death? The film touches upon this question, especially when Hamish grills his father (Claes Bang) about his mother, whom he stopped talking about following her death. In Campbell-Hughes’ capable hands, she crafts a slow-burn tale that is eerie, enticing, and genuinely unsettling in the way things unfold. Viewers will be at the edge of their seats wondering where the story will go next. But as the story goes
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