It Is In Us All is a provoking, yet overly-ambiguous, feature directorial debut from writer-director Antonia Campbell-Hughes. Following a tragic car accident, Hamish (Cosmo Jarvis, Lady Macbeth) befriends Evan (Rhys Mannion), a teenager involved in the crash who shatters Hamish’s mental barriers and forces him to confront the loss of his long-deceased mother. The film had its world premiere at SXSW this week, where it was nominated for the SXSW Grand Jury Award: Narrative Feature Competition. The deserving cast and crew were awarded the Special Jury Recognition for Extraordinary Cinematic Vision.

The violent crash occurs at the five-minute mark, so there is very little set-up, but it’s just enough to understand that Londoner Hamish Considine is as defensive and introverted as they come. But with reckless 17-year-old Evan by his side, he finds he can experience the life he could have had if his mother stayed in Donegal, Ireland. 

Evan believes the two were meant to meet. “Two and the same Adam. We are Adam,” he says in a religiously poetic confession. But the sexual tension between Evan and Hamish, however obvious, is obscured behind a fog of trauma – past and present – that Hamish must conquer first. The young man’s rising angst, which leads to an inevitable explosion in the final act, is only tethered by his inherently masculine need for independence and self-control. 

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Best classed as a psychological drama, It Is In Us All also dips into horror, with a sequence of Hamish tending to a ghastly wound guaranteed to make the stomach squirm. There’s a gothic element to the film, too, with Piers McGrail’s cinematography highlighting the secluded setting with gloomy visuals. The reoccurring red lighting, most prominent at the techno club, contrasts with Hamish’s coldness. It’s violent and intense – much like Evan and Hamish’s first encounter.

Nothing feels out of place until past the halfway point. By a bonfire, Evan and two friends perform a choreographed dance to a techno-pop song. It’s out of the blue and unfitting with the film’s ominous tone. Because of this diversion, the viewer must work that much harder to settle back into the sombre mood Campbell-Hughes so poignantly established in the first place. 

“How huge must her pain have gotten if she felt it was better for me for her not to live?” – Hamish on his mother’s death

We are given answers to the mystery of Hamish’s mother in dribs and drabs. After recognising the erasure of her from his life, Hamish says to his father, “[you] kept me from knowing her.” It is through Cara Daly’s (played by – surprise! – Campbell-Hughes) loss of her son Callum, the car accident victim, we see Hamish unearthing the root of his displacement and finding an empathetic understanding of his own mother’s struggle.

It Is In Us All is as nebulous as the small town of Donegal, and poses a haunting question: what is ‘it’ that sits inside us, waiting to be unleashed?

It Is In Us All debuts at SXSW Film Festival March 11, 2022