The Eternal Daughter (2022)

The Eternal Daughter is a ghost story that doesn’t lunge at you—it seeps in, quietly, until the air itself feels heavy with memory, regret, and love. Joanna Hogg turns an almost-empty hotel into a chamber of echoes, where every hallway and half-heard sound seems to press Julie and her mother closer to truths they’ve spent a lifetime sidestepping. Tilda Swinton, in a remarkable dual performance, makes the bond between mother and daughter feel tender, prickly, and painfully real, while the film’s restraint lets grief reveal itself in small gestures rather than speeches. If you want big scares or clear-cut answers, this may feel too hushed and elusive, but if you’re open to a beautifully unsettling meditation on family and loss, it’s the kind of haunting that lingers after the lights come up.

The Eternal Daughter is clearly aiming for a hushed, haunted meditation on grief and motherhood, using a near-empty hotel and creeping unease as a stand-in for memory and loss. The problem is it’s so committed to restraint that if you’re expecting a real mystery to unravel or a horror payoff, you may feel like you’re watching atmosphere circle the drain for a long time. Joanna Hogg’s slow, minimalist pacing can read as elegant and intimate, or just thin and tedious, depending on your tolerance for ambiguity and repetition. If you’re up for Tilda Swinton doing finely tuned, quietly devastating work in a mood piece, it’s worth your time; if you need plot momentum, clear answers, or big emotional catharsis, this likely isn’t for you.