‘The Surrender’ Trailer Teases A Ritual To Remember…
The horrific experience of grief is a pervasive theme in the horror genre, no matter how far back you look. Feeling like your heart is being torn from your chest after the loss of a loved one is a subjectively awful experience that varies from person to person. In her feature film debut, The Surrender, which world premiered at SXSW 2025, writer and director Julia Max tackles portraying her own experience with grief through the lens of an exhausting ritual and a deeply strained mother-daughter relationship.
In the film:
A fraught mother-daughter relationship is put to a terrifying test when the family patriarch dies, and the grieving mother hires a mysterious stranger to bring her husband back from the dead. As the bizarre and brutal resurrection spirals out of control, both women must confront their differences as they fight for their lives—and for each other.
Watch the new trailer below:
Colby Minifie (The Boys) stars in her first feature film alongside the famed Kate Burton (Grey’s Anatomy). Neil Sandilands, Vaughn Armstrong, Mia Ellis, Pete Ploszek, Chelsea Alden, Alaina Pollack, Riley Rose Critchlow, and Lola Prince Kelly also star in The Surrender.
In her review of the film from SXSW, Dread Central’s Mary Beth McAndrews wrote,
With a promising start and a story that feels like a combination of A Dark Song and Talk To Me, The Surrender is a surprisingly empathetic entry in the intergenerational trauma horror category. While parts of it feel derivative of previous meditations on grief, two strong central performances and Max’s script keep The Surrender feeling fresh in a tired subgenre. It captures the existential dread and pain of clawing your way out of the familial trauma you were born and thrust into, an inescapable fate that you can only power through and try to survive. It’s not an easy watch, but if you can stomach it, it is a beautiful one.
The Surrender comes exclusively to Shudder on May 23, 2025.
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