Exploring grief in the wake of loss is familiar terrain in horror, but writer/director Julia Max‘s feature debut, The Surrender, eschews the conventional approach in favor of visceral occult ritual horror.

The Surrender stars Colby Minifie (“The Boys“) and Kate Burton (“Grey’s Anatomy”) as a prickly daughter and mother duo dealing with the loss of a patriarch, and their fraught relationship gets tested further when mom hires an occultist to resurrect her husband from the dead. 

Our exclusive clip below highlights just how tense this central relationship gets, but their argument gets interrupted by an unsettling arrival.

Bloody Disgusting spoke with Max about her gnarly feature debut ahead of its world premiere at SXSW, discussing the film’s deeply personal origins and how it birthed a thrilling, bloody, horror-heavy entry in grief horror.

“This was very heavily inspired by my experience with my mother and with our death doula when my stepfather passed away, and honestly, I stole quite a bit from that,” Max reveals of the film’s basis. “From what we actually did without getting into too many spoilers. But basically, every single time we started a new step, in my mind, I kept thinking, ‘What is the worst direction this could possibly go in next?’ and wrote that down essentially.”

Like A Dark Song, The Surrender features an intricate dark ritual with extreme stakes, the likes of which unleashes a visceral ride for both its characters and the audience. The concept had Max exploring how death was perceived on a global scale. “While writing this piece, I looked into a lot of different practices around the world, traditions and everything. I wanted to try to incorporate different pieces from different cultures because I think there are so many fascinating death practices that might seem wild and out there to us but seem perfectly normal to other people. I just think the whole process of death and dying is absolutely fascinating.”

While that means that The Surrender isn’t steeped in a single practice or religion, it doesn’t mean that it lacks authenticity. Max enlisted an expert to help her create the perfect ritual for her feature debut. “Our occult consultant, Kevin Wetmore, is just one of my favorite people of all time. He’s fantastic. He was such a helpful reference. When I was coming up with the chant for this, I was just like, ‘Kevin, I need some resurrection rituals, what you got,’ and he was like, ‘Oh, what do you want? We’ve got Babylonian. We’ve got Sumerian.’ He had so many different ones for me, and we together thought that Sumerian was probably gonna be our best.”

It’s the type of physical and emotional journey that keeps ramping up the insanity at a steady clip, but Max shot The Surrender mostly in order to help keep track of the intricacies and bloodletting – emphasis on mostly.”We shot a little out of order. We tried to keep it as consistent as possible for the sake of our actors because it is such an emotional roller coaster. But Neil Sandilands, who plays The Man, we had him for such a short window of time because he was on tour with his band. So we were able to save all of that ritual stuff for the very end and do that right in a row, and I’m so glad we were able to do that. We did all the mother-daughter stuff before then. Kate [and Colby ] hadn’t met Neil and didn’t know much about him, so they kept being like, ‘So what is he like? What’s he going to be like? What do you think?’ I’m just like, ‘I’m not telling you anything about him.’ So, they were both kind of nervous and anxious when he showed up, and I think that really came across in their performances.”

While The Surrender puts its characters through the wringer in every way, never sacrificing the horror in its bid to work through grief, the experience brought catharsis to its creator. 

“It’s interesting, there’s really no full resolution when that happens,” Max reflects on the way the death of a loved one often leaves so many lingering questions that will never be answered. “But one of the things that I took great comfort in when writing is it made me understand my mom and appreciate her so much more because I was so close to my stepfather. In losing him, going through that with her, I realized it really is about the people who are left behind. That’s all you have left.

“It’s so important to embrace that because, even though we have wildly different memories of my stepfather and of our shared history together, who’s actually right or wrong, we debate about it all the time. But ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. All that matters are your own memories and how they made you feel.”

The Surrender makes its world premiere this Sunday at SXSW.