What the Owls Know

2024·R·1h 42m

AIMDb Rating

7.4/10

93K

Your Rating

Popularity

412

“What the woods take, the woods remember.”

A young woman returns to the Olympic Peninsula timber town where she grew up to identify the body of her older sister, who has been missing for nine years. The town remembers what it owes her family and offers her warm rooms, hot food, and a single carved wooden owl on her motel pillow each night. By the third night she begins counting the owls and realizes the count is higher than the nights.

Director: Eleanor Whitmer
Writers: Eleanor Whitmer
Stars: Maeve Halloran · Brent Pelletier · Wren Okafor

Top Cast (5)

Maeve Halloran
June Tarrant
Brent Pelletier
Wade Tarrant
Wren Okafor
Sister Bel
Reginald Tice
Pastor Boe
Daisy Mulvey
Inez

User Reviews

5 reviews

9.0

A24 has another one

by elevated_horror_fan

Whitmer's debut feature is patient, terrifying, and quietly enraged. Maeve Halloran gives a leading performance of contained grief that earns every supernatural beat. The owl motif is one of the better visual ideas in recent horror.

8.0

Real folk horror, not aesthetic folk horror

by folk_horror_purist

Most modern folk horror gestures at the genre. This one is in the genre, and rigorously. The town's communal complicity is the actual horror — the supernatural is the visible symptom.

6.0

Atmosphere over scares

by horror_skeptic

Beautifully shot, well acted, very little actually happens until the last twenty minutes. Whether you enjoy that depends on what you want from a horror film. I wanted slightly more.

5.0

Slow and slow and slow

by casual_horror_fan

I get what it's going for and I respect the craft. I was just bored a lot. The ending is genuinely chilling but the road there is the longest two hours I've spent in a theater this year.

8.0

Whitmer is the real deal

by modernist_picks

Already excited for whatever she makes next. The script trusts its audience, the cinematography of the Olympic Peninsula is gorgeously oppressive, and the score is doing the most by doing the least. Watch in a dark room.

Details

Release date: September 27, 2024 (United States)
Country of origin: United States
Language: English
Also known as: Lo Que Saben los Búhos · Ce Que Savent les Hiboux · Was die Eulen Wissen
Filming locations: Forks, Washington, USA · Olympic National Park, Washington, USA · Aberdeen, Washington, USA · Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
Production companies: Olympic Hush Pictures · Cedar Mountain Films · A24