Maybe because so many of them were cautionary tales, but traditional nursery rhymes can be unnerving as hell when you unpack the meaning beneath the cheery tune. Among the strangest of them all (perhaps ranking right below the deadly-plague-related “Ring around the Rosie”) is “Jack and Jill.” You know, the pair who went up the hill to fetch a pail of water: The first falls down, and the second comes tumbling after.
That familiar nursery rhyme loosely sits at the center of writer-director Samuel Van Grinsven ’s austere ghost story, “Went Up the Hill,” a somber and serious meditation on love, grief and unfinished business centered on a couple named Jack and Jill, played by Dacre Montgomery and Vicky Krieps . The pair give exacting performances laced with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detai