WELCOME TO MERCY (2018)

Studio:      IFC Midnight
Director:    Tommy Bertelsen
Writer:      Kristen Ruhlin
Producer:  Cary Granat, Ed Jones, Darren Goldberg, Igor Pronin, Julia Zaytseva, Joel Michaely
Stars:     Kristen Ruhlin, Lily Newmark, Ieva Seglina, Eileen Davies, Svetlana Ivannikova, Juris Strenga, Dainis Grube, Sophia Massa

Review Score:

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Summary:

A young mother experiencing signs of stigmata journeys to a remote convent to learn the truth about her haunting history.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Skulte, Latvia – Single mother Madeline and her young daughter Willow arrive at a remote house to visit Madeline’s invalid father Frank, who is a former priest, and her estranged mother Yelena, who is upset that Madeline returned to her childhood home. After a briefly haunting flashback, Madeline follows strange whispers to the barn outside where a supernatural force pulls her into a well. Yelena finds Madeline in the morning lying in the snow with no memory of what happened.

Elderly priest Father Joseph arrives at the house to pray over Frank. Madeline unexpectedly levitates in the air, violently attacks Willow while possessed, and develops sudden stigmata wounds on her hands and feet.

After she recovers, Father Joseph convinces Madeline to seek help at the isolated Sisters of Mercy convent for her daughter’s sake. Once there, Mother Superior allows Madeline to call Willow, but no one picks up on the other end.

Madeline meets strict nun Alyona, who explains the convent’s rules. Madeline also befriends young nun August, who warns Madeline to stay away from the convent’s bell tower.

Mother Superior hypnotizes Madeline to remember what happened in the barn. After recalling her fall into the well, Madeline sees a man grabbing her as a child before shaking herself out of the vision. When Madeline asks what happened, Mother Superior responds that there is something dangerous inside her that they must drag out.

Madeline confides in August about how she frightened her daughter. August tells Madeline more about the bell tower.

Alyona confronts Madeline with a claim that her mother was a whore who bore Madeline out of sin. Acting on a clue Alyona provides, Madeline finds a book in the library containing cryptic notes revealing the affair between Frank and Yelena.

Madeline sneaks into Mother Superior’s office to call Willow again. Willow tells her mother that she isn’t supposed to talk to her. Yelena hangs up the phone.

Madeline sees Alyona outside and follows her to the bell tower. Madeline is unable to get past a locked door with a keyhole in the shape of two x’s.

Mother Superior has a priest give Madeline a physical examination. The priest asks Madeline if she has been to the bell tower and accuses her of lying when she says Willow is her daughter’s name.

August takes Madeline to an underground room where a nun named Beth tells fortunes for other young nuns. Beth pricks Madeline’s palm, prompting another haunting vision of Madeline as a child. The stigmata wounds return as Madeline passes out. While unconscious, Madeline sees herself covered in blood as chanting nuns surround her.

After she recovers, Madeline concludes that there is a conspiracy to take her daughter away. Madeline rushes to a rowboat in a storm to escape the convent.

August stops Madeline by claiming she can explain what is happening and help save Willow. August tells Madeline that she heard Mother Superior and Father Joseph purposefully plotting to isolate Madeline at Sisters of Mercy.

While alone in the chapel, Madeline hears Alyona’s voice telling her to go to the bell tower. Alyona also says that going back into the well is the only way for Madeline to get out.

After emerging from a vision of falling into the well again, Madeline ascends the bell tower. Following her daughter’s voice, Madeline finds a book containing personal family photos of her parents.

Alyona appears to Madeline, revealing that she was actually a vision of Yelena as a young nun the entire time. Flashbacks show that Yelena’s illicit affair with Father Frank caused the couple to become possessed. Father Joseph regularly performed exorcisms on the couple, but the entity ended up inhabiting their daughter Madeline instead. With seemingly no way to save her, Frank threw Madeline into the well, but she survived.

August confronts Madeline in the bell tower. August tries convincing Madeline to escape by jumping.

Madeline suddenly wakes to find that she is actually tied to a bed in Yelena’s home while Father Joseph attempts an exorcism. Yelena asks the entity to spare Madeline from her sin by returning to her. The entity transfers to Yelena and kills her.

In her vision, Madeline becomes separated from August. A flashback shows Father Joseph convincing Yelena to send Madeline away from Skulte for her safety.

Madeline takes Willow to the cremation service for Yelena, which is conducted by Father Joseph. Afterward, Madeline and Willow board a train with Frank. Madeline becomes concerned when she notices dirt from the well beneath her fingernails. She also sees the keyhole symbol from the bell tower scarred on Frank’s arm as his eyes briefly flash red.

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Review:

Madeline hasn’t been back to her birthplace in Latvia since she was a child. Now a single mother, old wounds have to be ignored for Madeline to visit her father Frank on his deathbed in the family’s remote countryside home.

The only person possibly more uncomfortable with her return is Madeline’s estranged mother Yelena. The fact that Madeline brought along her young daughter Willow prompts additional cause for concern. Whatever went on between these women, silence speaks volumes about their uneasy emotional discomfort.

Madeline’s Memory Lane march takes another sour turn when a seemingly supernatural fall down a well triggers frightful flashbacks. Her situation worsens once again when Father Joseph comes to pray, igniting a sudden bout of apparent possession, during which Madeline develops bloody stigmata scars while violently attacking her daughter.

For Willow’s sake, the priest convinces Madeline to seek answers regarding her curious condition at the isolated Sisters of Mercy convent. While Mother Superior and another strict sister regularly send strange stares, Madeline befriends a young nun who warns her about the oddly locked bell tower. Not all is as it initially seems however, as the secret behind Madeline’s madness becomes but the first clue regarding the haunting truth of her hidden past.

If slow-burn Catholic creepiness doesn’t light your fire, you may want to think twice about “Welcome to Mercy.” Director Tommy Bertelsen’s moody melodrama is often as sleepy as it is spooky, with its stinginess for providing scares rivaled only by stubbornness to seed the story with sufficient suspense.

“Welcome to Mercy” drops breadcrumbs about Madeline’s mysterious background sparingly. This deliberate exclusion of exposition means to be a tension-building tactic. Except that small spark of “what’s really going on?” enticement doesn’t hold the heat to maintain a robust one hour and 45 minute runtime. By waiting too long between each individual domino tipping, audience interest fades in step with the fiction’s gradual fizzle.

The film instead manufactures atmosphere through visual appeal. Interiors submerge themselves in lantern-lit blackness. Production design drapes exteriors in chilly snowfall or thick fog for a drearily dreamlike quality befitting the tale’s tone. Dark cinematography sometimes overindulges in its enchantment for shadowy settings, resulting in more than one sequence requiring squinting to see.

Imagery isn’t the only element that can be difficult to discern. When facts finally fall into place during the last act, there can be some confusion regarding who is who and how every piece fits together because, once again, “Welcome to Mercy” plays its cards frustratingly close to its chest. Vague character names, vaguer relationships, and other cryptic inferences taking place on two timelines unnecessarily convolute what is, in the end, a rather straightforward demonic possession yarn.

“Welcome to Mercy” isn’t bad. Its melancholy makeup merely drags it into dryness. Crying violins and other such strains in the score enhance the somber seriousness of an elegantly Gothic feel. But serving the minor morsel of mystery as a main meal without accompanying appetizers of intrigue leaves viewers desperate for reasons to remain invested in the outcome.

Performances pass criteria for believability, although the demand to be dour means no one embodies an exciting personality. This adds one more hindrance to the film’s already unfortunate inability to electrify engagement.

“Welcome to Mercy’s” spin on a familiar subject stays too slight to stand out in the exorcism subgenre. Committing more deeply to the driving family drama of Kristen Ruhlin’s script conflicts with the fright film frame, causing the movie to become enrapt in emotional themes that have a hard time hitting the heart.

Watching “Welcome to Mercy” doesn’t come with regret for having misspent one’s time. But its impact evaporates so swiftly that its message is unfortunately as negligible as the overall experience. Viewers tuned to its pseudo-soap opera style may find more entertainment value while those burned out by similar spook stories are likely to remain underwhelmed.

Review Score: 45

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