Being Film #22 for Hooptober 2025

I came away from Demon Pond with a lot of questions. Not about the plot: this is a relatively straightforward folktale about forest spirits, obligations and the ramifications of not obliging them. The film is made with an abundance of care and no small amount of visual flourish. But in the end I left asking myself “why?” Why did this need to be told? There are shades of questions around modernism encroaching on nature, the winnowing of religion as humanity shifts to more capitalistic, selfish gains, and the time-old debate about the death of one serving the many (the same thing at the heart of the new Fantastic Four reboot, which I watched the same day). But why this movie? Maybe I’m being hard, but I walked away from it with no benefit other than having chalked a film off my Hooptober list as well as my ever-increasing Criterion pile.

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