Julia Max‘s feature debut “The Surrender” goes to some surreal and troubling places. But the core of the film begins with something both horrible and commonplace that often isn’t portrayed on the big screen: Caretaking for a dying relative.
“The Surrender,” now streaming on Shudder, is the story of Megan (Colby Minifie) and her mother Barbara (Kate Burton) as they’re caring for their family’s patriarch during his final hours. After he passes, Barbara hopes to resurrect her husband through a ritual that will open them up to immense darkness.
Max knew that before any supernatural stuff took place, there needed to be enough characterization within the family to ground them once the unthinkable started happening. Unfortunately, that vision was met with early resistance.
“A lot of producers initially thought the mother-daughter stuff needed to be condensed to get to the scarier stuff much earlier,” Max says. “To be honest, I actually did try that. I did a version where we get into the scary stuff far earlier, and it just didn’t work at all, because if you jump right into that and don’t build and flesh out these characters, you don’t care about them, so it all becomes meaningless.”
Max and her cast and crew on the set of “The Surrender.”
Lizz Marshall/Shudder
Beyond pacing, Max was also met with dissent when discussing the challenging yet relatable relationship between Megan and Barbara.
“Early on, I had a lot of people discourage me from leaning too much on the mother-daughter element because they thought it wasn’t sellable,” she says. “They were just like, ‘People don’t care.’ That was disheartening because I think mother-daughter dynamics are fascinating. There’s so much there that we haven’t explored enough in film and television.”
Luckily, Max was able to get a team in place and a financier on board with her vision. The film is stronger for it too, as watching Megan’s mental state, her relationship with her mother and her father’s health all deteriorate is one of the most stressful and compelling elements of the film. Max says the look and feel of the film’s first act is greatly inspired by the claustrophobia of Chantal Akerman’s 1975 masterpiece “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.”
“The caregiving process is so monotonous and exhausting and repetitive,” she says. “I wanted to capture that, so it’s a lot of those stagnant, wide, locked-off shots establishing this world that feels like a cage, that you feel trapped in.”
While Max understands that some audiences might not align with deliberately paced horror, the final version — made with collaborators who understand her vision — is the truest to the caregiving that gave birth to this story in the first place.
“I think it’s incredibly stressful,” she says. “The whole process is so nerve-racking and exhausting and draining. But I do think it’s one of those things with slow-burn horror in general: Some people really get it and dig it and they understand that build is anxiety-inducing, and for other people, it’s just not their jam. I understand that too … it’s a preference thing.”
Ian McDonald
Another challenge of filming such a unique and personal vision is knowing that those close to her might see a version of themselves onscreen — in this case, her mother, as elements of their relationship reverberate between Megan and Barbara.
“That’s tough, to be honest,” Max says. “The first few drafts are just for me as a way to process the work, see what comes out. And then Ian McDonald, my husband who’s also the producer on this, is the first person I share all of my scripts with, and he usually gives me the thumbs up, thumbs down. He’ll say, ‘You shouldn’t share this.’ But in the writing process, the characters start much more similar to me, similar to people I know, but they distance themselves further and further. The result is no longer me, is no longer whoever inspired it — it’s the individual character. For this one in particular, it was very important to me that my mom signed off on this before we started shopping it around. I made sure she read it and was OK with it because it is stealing some of our dynamic.”
This distinction between reality and fiction also helps Max out when she’s directing, as she isn’t just searching for unachievable mimics of real life.
“It’s a process of realizing that the characters are no longer me,” she says. “Once you bring on those actors, you have to trust them. And they now are that character, and they’re the experts on that character. So you can guide them, but ultimately if what they’re doing or saying doesn’t feel real to them and doesn’t resonate with them, it’s not going to look good on camera. It’s going to feel false. And so you have to adjust and adapt so that it feels as authentic for the actors as possible to get a good performance.”
Luckily, audiences so far have embraced Max’s vision, as “The Surrender” was warmly received at this year’s South by Southwest. The premiere also allowed her to connect with other creatives about keeping true to their work — even if some along the way don’t understand the vision.
“It was such a wonderful opportunity to get to meet other filmmakers in the genre space because, to be honest, I didn’t know a whole lot before,” she says. “It’s been really nice being able to talk to other people about what they’ve gone through, and hearing that some of the things I’m going through are totally normal.”
Watch the “Surrender” trailer below.
