Her Will Be Done Review: Arthouse Carrie

Her Will Be Done is a cryptic folk horror that plays like a European arthouse version of Carrie with a tangible feeling of dread you’ll have to endure.

Don’t expect to find out much of anything about Nawojka’s powers, the visions she experiences, or the resulting darkness that encroaches on the family farm: this is a very cryptic film with no ambition to explain anything. You’ll have to endure the sight of animals dying, mysterious fungi taking over the ranch, and unsettling demonic rituals, with no real understanding of what it all means. It’s the kind of movie where you’re best off to simply go along with the oblique story and, instead of trying to grasp it all, focus on how it makes you feel. In the case of Her Will Be Done, that feeling is mostly just absolute misery.

Her Will Be Done can feel like an endurance test at times. It depicts some particularly unpleasant subjects, such as the aforementioned animal deaths (at one point the camera stays on the image of a dying cow for minutes as its breaths slowly decline) or sexual violence, which is depicted with a sort of cold realism that’s frightening. But it’s not just a tough watch for what it portrays: the film’s pacing is glacially slow, and the cryptic nature makes it hard to stay engaged. And so eventually a second emotion starts creeping up on you: you no longer just feel miserable but also a bit bored.

Fortunately, if there’s any genre where those negative emotions are welcome, it’s horror (misery, that is; boredom not so much). If writer/director Julia Kowalski’s goal was to craft an uncomfortable experience, she has succeeded, but that’s the extent of the horror present in her movie. Her Will Be Done constantly flirts with the genre, but you’re just waiting for the endless slow burn to lead into something bigger. De Palma’s Carrie pays it all off with one of the greatest horror sequences the world has ever seen, and while I’m not expecting this level of spectacle from Her Will Be Done, which deals in a more subtle feeling of distress, it remains staggeringly low-key even in its climax.

Beneath it all, there are some interesting ideas in the film, though. It’s a classic coming-of-age story, with the free-spirited Sandra helping Nawojka to liberate herself from the men in her family. The most fascinating idea presented by Her Will Be Done is the cultural tension at its center. Nawojka and her family are Polish immigrants in a French village, and more than anything they want to be accepted into the community. Decisions by the patriarch of the family seem guided by that need to fit in more than anything else, which becomes especially apparent during the wedding. One of Nawojka’s brothers is marrying a girl from the French community, and the resentment directed towards the Polish family is palpable in every word and look. And so it’s particularly easy for them to scapegoat Sandra; by turning her into the other, they become part of the norm.

As is par for the course with these types of films, Her Will Be Done looks stunning. Simon Beaufils captures the muddy fields and sinister shadows with more beauty than they would ever deserve. The 16mm film cinematography recalls a more classic look, which the frequent use of zoom lenses also plays into. For as low key as other aspects of Her Will Be Done can feel, it’s actually a very stylish film on the visual side.

Thanks to an unrestrained powerhouse performance by lead actor Maria Wróbel, Her Will Be Done manages to just barely work. It’s a miserable ride and lacks the payoff that makes it all feel worth it. It never quite commits fully to the horror genre despite featuring any number of elements that could get it there and might’ve benefitted from something more overt. But Julia Kowalski finds some interesting avenues to explore in this story of Polish immigrants in a rural French community that make up for some of the most disappointing horror aspects.

Her Will Be Done (Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16-17, 2025, in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes. Read our review of Enzo!