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| The Surrender |
Director Julia Max's début feature, The Surrender, revolves around Megan's (Colby Minifie) tense relationship with her mother Barbara (Kate Burton). When her terminally ill father passes away, Barbara invites a stranger into the family home to resurrect the family patriarch, which only complicates mother and daughter's attempts to resolve their difficult past.
Max's previous credits include her debut short film, The Colonies (2015), a science-fiction premise with a reality television spin, and the horror, Pieces Of Me (2020), about a starlet who discovers a way to fulfil her dreams of fame and fortune. Minifie has starred in The Boys (2019-present), Fear The Walking Dead (2015-2023) and Charlie Kaufman's psychological thriller I'm Thinking Of Ending Things (2020).
Speaking with Eye For Film, Max and Minifie discussed The Surrender's personal roots, the unreliability of memory and how cinema can make us feel less alone.
Paul Risker: The word horror conjures up different expectations for different people, and yet it is often seen as a specific thing.
Julia Max: Oh, God, that is so true. I just got into that debate last night. It is a constant conversation starter because there's such a prejudice against horror. People are like, "Oh, it's just gore and blood and slashers." No, horror means so many different things; there are so many different kinds of horror. What's so brilliant is that it encapsulates many different sub-genres.
I feel there's this tendency, if it's a good horror film, for people to call it a psychological thriller, but if it's bad, it's just a horror film. I don't know why. It's frustrating, and it drives me nuts to be honest.
PR: There's a lot of prejudice around horror that is inseparable from its story.
Colby Minifie: It's also one of the last genres that will actually bring people into theatres because it's best experienced on a big screen with a bunch of people. We live for that kind of adrenaline rush with others, and we love horror for that reason.
PR: What was the genesis of The Surrender?
JM: This was very heavily inspired by my stepfather's passing and what my mother and I went through. When we're in this position of caregiving towards the end, when he was struggling with cancer, we felt completely unprepared because it is something that people just don't talk about. Our society is very scared to talk about death or dying. So, writing this film was very much a way for me to process that grief and help me understand what that was like — the whole arc of this movie represents this process of grief.
I feel like the characters started off very much inspired by my mother and me. Then, when we got Colby and Kate on board, and we started diving into the rehearsal process, they did such a wonderful job taking those characters and making them their own. So, now it's definitely not about me and my mom anymore, it's about them.
CM: Well, also, because you wrote so honestly and truthfully and specifically, and the more specific something is, the more universal it is. It became personal for everyone on the set because everyone has to consider their parents dying, and they have to contend with that kind of grief.
JM: Well, I would also argue it's because your acting was so phenomenal that it just draws you in.
PR: Why we are so drawn to cinema and art more broadly, is that it holds up a mirror for us to self-reflect.
JM: It does hold up a mirror, and it makes us feel less alone when we see those stories, because it's such an isolating place to be in. I have quite a few friends now who have dealt with cancer, and it's amazing how people just disappear. It's like they're afraid to talk about it or to see them.
There's such a distance, and that's usually the last thing that people need and want, especially the caregivers who need support too. It's hard work, and it's something that all of us are going to have to deal with at some point, whether we want to admit it or not.
CM: Fortunately, I have yet to deal with it in the case of my own parents, but we have no idea what it's actually going to be like until we have to do it. Doing this movie, I had to imagine what it would be like to be in that space and really go there. You better believe I hugged my parents really hard when I got home. I was like, 'All of those things that annoy me, I'm just gonna let them roll right under the rug. We're not even going to think about it.' Then, of course, over time…
So, making this movie made me look at my parents in a different light and be present to them being alive, in this moment.
JM: It's so important to cherish those moments with all of our loved ones because it's easy to take them for granted.
PR; One of the film's key themes is the unreliability of memory, and how we habitually construct unreliable narratives.
JM: I don't know if you've encountered this with your parents, but I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where I've been like, "Oh, remember when this happened?" And my mom's like, "That's not what happened." Then you get into that whole debate and ultimately, you realise it doesn't really matter in the long run.
CM: Everybody in the world creates their own narrative about what is happening in order to survive, right? Or to live with the choices that you've made. I really like that theme too.
PR: You don't immediately realise how claustrophobic The Surrender is, but as the story unfolds it becomes more about claustrophobia and entrapment.
JM: I'm so glad you felt that way. We filmed the bulk of this at Descanso Gardens, which was such a stunning venue, and the Boddy House that's situated there. People aren't normally allowed on the second floor, and it is awesome, as you can see in the movie. That was a dream location, and we got very lucky with that one because it's such a massive space.
CM: I found this picture yesterday, randomly looking on Instagram, of a cockroach having been painted over. It's like a landlord special. I was just looking, and I thought I'd got to be posting for the movie, and then I realised this is actually Megan in The Surrender [laughs]. It's like the narratives that we tell ourselves about who we are, are just as claustrophobic as any space that we're in.
When I first read the script, I imagined the space to actually be quite smaller and then when we got to this house, it had space. And despite that, we are suffocating inside the emotional tension because a three-person family is intense.
JM; It's also a cage that you get trapped in because being so focused on taking care of your dad, you can't leave, and so it becomes this large prison cell.
The Surrender premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival on Austin, Texas.
