Her Will Be Done Review | Julia Kowalski | 2025 | 95 min | [Certificate] |
- Director Julia Kowalski
- Starring Maria Wróbel, Roxane Mesquida, Wojciech Skibiński
- Runtime 1 hr 35 min
- Subgenre Folk horror
- Reviewed by Hope Madden
On a French farm worked by her Polish migrant family, 20-year-old Naw longs to become a vet and fears she carries her mother’s curse. Then the neighbour’s daughter, a woman with a scandalous past, moves back home.
Julia Kowalski’s Her Will Be Done is a French folk horror film set on a farm worked by a Polish migrant family. There, 20-year-old Naw (Maria Wróbel) dreams of becoming a vet and half believes she carries her mother’s curse. When the neighbour’s daughter (Roxane Mesquida) comes home with a past nobody will explain, the line between illness, rage and something older gets harder to find. Kowalski keeps it all rooted in rubber boots, chores and religion, and she lets the mystery stay open. In this Her Will Be Done review for Ginger Nuts of Horror, Hope Madden weighs Wróbel’s near-silent lead, the film’s backward fairy tale and its debt to Demon and Animale.
Her Will Be Done keeps you guessing. Maria Wróbel barely speaks yet tells you everything with her eyes, and Julia Kowalski never settles whether Naw’s episodes are medical, supernatural or plain rage. The characters stay hard to predict, even as the bones of the fairy tale decide where it must end.
Hope Madden
Chores, Curses and a Girl Who Wants Out
Julia Kowalski grounds each moment of Her Will Be Done in an utterly authentic day-to-day. Every chore, every mismatched but sturdy layer of clothing, every slap of a rubber glove or boot makes you ache with Naw (Maria Wróbel) for something more than the French farm life of a Polish migrant.
But that’s 20-year-old Naw’s life, with her kind but religious father (Wojciech Skibinski) and her two rowdy brothers (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski and Kuba Dyniewicz). Naw yearns to be a veterinarian, or to do anything that gets her out of this house, this life. Even if she believes, as her father does, that she carries her mother’s curse.
The realism of Kowalski’s approach keeps you guessing: are Naw’s episodes medical? Supernatural? Just plain rage? The filmmaker mixes messages, confounds clues, and transfixes you in the mystery, mainly through Wróbel’s convincing, wide-eyed observational performance.
Wróbel’s quite wonderful, rarely speaking, communicating the entire arc of the character with her enormous, searching eyes. Thanks to the performance it’s easy to question Naw’s reality and to worry about the way she interprets the reality around her.
A Backward Fairy Tale Rooted in Patriarchy
Naw’s life of quietly raging frustration takes quite a turn when the neighbor’s daughter (Roxane Mesquida)—scandalous for some reason Naw’s father won’t tell her—moves back home.
From this moment, Kowalski spins a folk horror rooted in misogyny, patriarchy, religion, power, and superstition. All of this as observed by the sheltered, innocent Naw. It’s like a fairy tale where the beautiful fairy finds herself somehow in Naw’s miserable world rather than vice versa, and the filmmaker mines that concept to create a kind of backward folktale.
How Does Her Will Be Done Compare to Demon and Animale?
In its best moments, Her Will Be Done conjures Marcin Wrona’s 2015 treasure Demon. At other moments, the understated realism calls Emma Benestan’s feminist horror Animale to mind. Kowalski, who writes with Simon Beaufils, complicates characters, makes them tough to predict. And yet, the bones of both reality and fairy tale dictate what must be.
The Verdict: Is Her Will Be Done Worth Watching?
The verdict
A realist folk horror that keeps you guessing, held together by Maria Wróbel’s near-silent performance, even if the fairy tale beneath it sets the course of its ending.
Watch it if: you like folk horror grounded in daily drudgery, mysteries left open, and films in the line of Demon and Animale.
Skip it if: you want clear answers about what is happening to Naw, or a lead who explains herself out loud.
Hope “Madd at the Movies” Madden, a graduate of The Ohio State University, is a freelance writer and co-founder of maddwolf.com. In addition to 12 years at the award-winning independent weekly newspaper The Other Paper, Hope has written for Columbus Monthly Magazine, The Ohio State University Alumni Magazine, is a published poet and fiction writer. She also currently writes for Columbus Underground, Screen Fervor and the UK Film Review.
Hope’s a member of the Critics Choice Association, the Online Association of Female Film Critics, Columbus Film Critics Association and the Women’s Film Critic Circle. She’s also on the Nightmares Film Festival jury. She co-hosts the weekly movie review podcast The Screening Room and the bi-weekly horror film podcast, Fright Club.
In Columbus, Ohio, you can catch Hope on TV every Friday morning on ABC6/Fox28’s Good Day Columbus.
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