[The following text was published in Pardo, the official daily of the Locarno Film Festival.]

Not one to take no for an answer, Donna compels her daughter Valerie and granddaughter Kay to drive with her to their holiday home in the woods to clear out her late husband’s effects. At this secluded cabin, the younger women discover to their shock that Donna is in fact holding a man hostage: she claims that he is the one responsible for the brutal killing of Becky, Valerie’s elder daughter, the year before. Kay is aghast, and Valerie tries to dissuade her mother from jumping to conclusions, but Donna is convinced she’s got the right man. As they interrogate their captive to ascertain his identity, however, they uncover truths far more horrifying.

Nothing is really what it seems in Sundown, a hair-raising work of supernatural horror by American filmmaker Rebekah McKendry and executive produced by Slash, of Guns N’ Roses fame. Donna’s victim, it turns out, isn’t so helpless after all – and he’s got his own kinsfolk, who, looking to rescue him, prepare to lay siege to the cabin as the sun sets. What starts out as a crime thriller takes stunning detours, shifting genres and subverting narrative conventions to giddy effect.

McKendry, who is also a scholar of horror cinema and a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, knows its tropes inside out, which allows her to toy effectively with the viewer’s expectations. She hits the ground running, wasting no time in scene-setting or elaborate backstories. The three women at the film’s centre have different ways of grieving Becky, but McKendry lets that surface over the course of action rather than through exposition.

The characters are brought to life by a seasoned cast with considerable genre experience under their collective belt. Irish actress (and stage director) Olwen Fouéré (of 2018’s Mandy and the 2021 Locarno title She Will) plays Donna as a fierce, no-nonsense type who curses a blue streak. She is matched in wit and violence – and her capacity for downing grandpa’s moonshine – by Camille Sullivan’s (Shelby Oaks, 2024) Valerie. Caught between their sarcastic sparring is the earnest Kay, portrayed by Summer H. Howell – who previously played Sullivan’s daughter in the mystery horror Hunter Hunter (2020).

Cut down to the bone, Sundown adeptly permutes its primary elements – snow, sunlight and blood – like a piece of constrained poetry. The action is gory enough to make an inveterate horror fan wince, but also laced with queasy-making visual humour that multiplies the impact. Light on its feet and unrelenting in tension, Sundown is a work of expert craftsmanship.