At just 15 years old, Lois embarks on an investigation to discover the fate of her sister’s soul, who died tragically and too soon. In the middle of Arkansas, to dare to ask is to dare to hope.
The storytelling prowess of Holy Water is absolutely disarming. It is the product of an acute examination of the director’s memories of growing up in an ultra-religious environment (Claire Barnett was raised in a Baptist community). In fact, it’s a period film and dates back to the time when a wave of teenage suicides began in that same community. As a period piece, the film takes on an ambiguous status: it is set in a specific time, the late 2000s (at one point we see a CD of Radiohead’s In Rainbows), but it also feels like a revision of the teens films of the 1990s (with an explicit reference to The Craft) – a revision fraught with the trauma of loss and the contradictory feelings of guilt. The impact of Holy Water lies in the restrained nature of the filmmaking, in the succinct and unflustered way in which the scenes are constructed and the action organised and, of course, in the way in which the actress Abby Miner transcends the pain of loss through the confrontation between the elements: ‘circle of fire’/ ‘holy water’. (Ricardo Vieira Lisboa)
