Adèle Exarchopoulos in The Five Devils (MUBI)

With witchcraft, racism, a lesbian interracial affair, and even a case of arson in its mix, the French Alps–based The Five Devils has a lot of potential to start fires. But the film’s curiously low stakes and energy level mostly dampen its flames to a low boil. It’s hard to know what to compare this pensive thriller to—perhaps an alpine Donnie Darko.

Adèle Exarchopoulos plays Joanne, a swimming instructor in a small mountain town. Her mixed-race, deadpan little daughter Vicky (Sally Dramé, with a billowing head of hair) mimics her mom’s movements as Joanne teaches aquarobics, a sign of her devotion. Later the two roam the woods and trek to a mountain lake, where it becomes apparent that the mother lives to swim in the clear, bracing waters—a setting that will be crucial later on. There, the daughter describes the odor of mushrooms and pine cones in detail; she clearly displays a superpower sense of smell when she sniffs her mother out in a blindfolded game of slightly scary hide-and-go-seek.

Back at home, one senses that all is not well. Joanne seems brusque and preoccupied. She barely seems to connect with her laconic Black firefighter husband, Jimmy (Moustapaha Mbengue). The news that his estranged sister Julia (Swala Emati) is due to visit thrusts Joanne into rigid anger—the reasons for the distance and disturbance will emerge into view. Meanwhile, Vicky is brewing smelly potions out of dead birds and other detritus found in the garden to cast spells and thwart Julia’s stay with the family. A different magic brew she stumbles upon will allow the girl to go back in time, effectively spying on her mother’s life and tracing events that brought it to a fraught present state. 

That’s a pretty neat trick, one that many of us would try. Who wouldn’t want to eavesdrop on a loved one’s past and see what really went down in a long-ago, different life? Director Léa Mysius doesn’t do much with this special power, the same way she more or less drops the heightened-sense-of-smell story line. Similarly, schoolmates run at Vicky screaming racist nicknames, but the bullying scenes come and go in a perfunctory way, without much staying power. 

The film gains some intrigue when it explores the charged relationship between the younger, more rebellious Julia and Joanne in the period before Joanne began a relationship with Julia’s brother. And it really picks up some sensationalist steam unspooling a horrific event that explains some harsh physical and mental damage in the forefront. This past catastrophe comes a bit late in the game, is echoed in the present, and—again—seems to have an odd lack of emotional impact, both for Joanne and for us.

Though big moments in the movie may not land as hard as they might, a sense of eerie anxiety succeeds in disorienting the viewer, while the mountainous landscapes add an epic, otherworldly air to the unsettling story. Exarchopoulos’s performance as a hardened woman listening to long-buried instincts hits the right notes, although the actress might want to wait a little while before playing another closed-off, defiant part similar to her roles in Zero Fucks Given and Sibyl. The Five Devils does actually have an unexpected, insinuating power, just not at the points where we expect it.