In the old nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. In the Samuel Van Grinsven drama “Went Up the Hill,” characters named Jack and Jill have their own business on that hill, and it does involve water, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. (That said, the next lines of the old English nursery rhyme – “Jack fell down and broke his crown / And Jill came tumbling after” – do give you the sense that nobody comes out unscathed in any telling of this particular story).
The movie called “Went Up the Hill,” which had its world premiere on Thursday during the opening night of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, is a ghost story with roots in children’s doggerel, a tale of possession that runs on mood, not scares.