Stranger Things star's 'incredibly life-changing' film experience in New Zealand
Australian actor Dacre Montgomery returns to the screen with gothic horror Went Up the Hill and finds himself healing while filming in Canterbury during lockdown.
Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery spent many Christmas holidays in New Zealand, where his father is from, but his first trip to the South Island was during lockdown to film a modern horror ghost story in freezing conditions.
Went Up the Hill, co-written and directed by NZ-born Samuel Van Grinsven, is the Australian actor’s first time playing an Australian character.
Montgomery told Saturday Morning filming in New Zealand was an “incredibly life-changing” experience, one that gave him a chance to “unpack of lot of my own trauma”.

“It was really special, and I think … part of my process of grieving and healing was coming and treating this as a bit of a pilgrimage for me, in terms of like seeing family afterwards that I hadn't seen in a long time.”
Set in a remote architecturally designed home near Christchurch, by a mountain-ringed lake, Jack (Montgomery’s character) arrives for the funeral of his estranged mother, Elizabeth, and meets her widow Jill (co-star Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread).
Over the course of several unsettling nights, both are possessed by Elizabeth's ghost, who uses their bodies to communicate with the other from beyond the grave, and over time becomes more sinister.
Dacre Montgomery: Went Up The Hill
Canterbury's High Country setting lends itself perfectly to Samuel Van Grinsven's eerie vision for the film.
Kirsty Griffin
The narrative on processing grief and loss drew Montgomery in.
“It's felt like healing in a way, which is like kind of the best possible thing you could hope for in terms of a performance, or a character rather, like going on that journey and it becoming something that actually has an impact on your life.”
Van Grinsven went on a hunt around Queenstown for the perfect house that would encapsulate his vision, but he instead found it just an hour-and-a-half away from where he was born. It was so cold that the cameras’ batteries froze, the director and actor told ABC News.
“When we found that location in Canterbury High Country that colour palette that naturally is in that area in winter is just sensational - it's the tussocks, it's that kind of like volcanic rock, it's snow, it's almost like a bone type colour as well,” Van Grinsven told RNZ.
“It felt so haunting in itself and so void of life and that really connected with the film in a lot of ways and what the characters are going through.”
The film's monochromatic tones through the interior and exterior shots matched the narrative, Samuel Van Grinsven says.
Kirsty Griffin
It was the closest thing to filming in black and white without doing that, he says.
“I remember taking the cast there for the first time to show them, probably a few days out from shooting, and they both had a very emotional reaction to being there because, even in a geographical sense, it's very close to what was in the script.”
Adding to that suspense and unease, Krieps and Montgomery delivered their lines in almost a hushed whisper “like two characters who were in a church”, Van Grinsven says.
“Our sound department hated it, I must say, because they were whispering the entire film,” the director laughs. “But something really beautiful about it, and I think the feeling it creates for an audience, is you've walked into a conversation and into a house that you are not invited to, it's an unearned intimacy and I think that's the uncomfortability that you feel.”
Vicky Krieps created a special song for her character on Went Up the Hill, which ended up being the ending credit song too.
Kirsty Griffin
As well as bringing their own scents to get into character, the co-stars were able to get a taste of the mood Van Grinsven wanted when he shared early sketches of the score.
“I didn't know this going in, I didn't know until we were actually physically together shooting, but [Krieps] writes a song for every character that she plays, an original song, and often they come to her either toward the end of the shoot or once she's finished a shoot.
“The Went Up the Hill one came to her really, really early on … and it's actually the end credit song in the film … so there are moments where it's her actual breaths or vocals that play in the score itself.”
Montgomery, who found fame after joining the second season of Netflix hit Stranger Things, says he enjoys exploring characters through various aspects like smell, appearance and sound, just as he did with antagonist Billy Hargrove.
With few and far between appearances on screen for the past six years, the actor says he feels he has "shed" the character of Billy.
Went Up the Hill co-writer and director Samuel Van Grinsven with Australian actor Dacre Montgomery at the New Zealand premiere of the feature film.
Kirsty Griffin
His next venture is to direct a feature thriller-drama film written by Jory Anast, who co-wrote Went Up the Hill.
“I'm happy if this is the first and last movie I ever make. Everything is on the line, I want to put everything into it, and I'm not trying to be anyone else or do anything else outside of that scenario, it's just this one film. It's so important to me.
“I hope that it can come together because a movie can really fall apart at any moment. I kind of, in a sick way, love the stakes of that so we're really pushing to make a great movie.”
Went Up the Hill’s next NZIFF showcase will be on 4 September and will be released at the major cinemas on 9 October.