Religious horror casts a long shadow. From The Exorcist to Carrie to The Omen, its greatest works loom large, impossible not to echo. Paolo Strippoli’s The Holy Boy (La valle dei sorrisi) carries traces of those classics, but proves itself just as haunting in its own right. Forget head-spinning exorcisms and cheap shocks — this is something quieter, stranger, and every bit as disturbing: a study of grief, faith, and the crushing burden placed on a boy forced to become his community’s saviour.
The film follows Sergio (Michele Riondino), a sports teacher and former pro Judoka haunted by his past, who lands a substitute PE post in Remis, a remote village ominously nicknamed the “Valley of Smiles.” On paper, it seems like the perfect fresh start. Sergio, used to the applause of professional sport, is welcomed a little too warmly — but he hopes this quiet corner of the world will let him wrestle with his grief in peace.
But the village has its own plans. On his first night at the local pub, a drink too many sparks a sudden, uncharacteristic rage, catching the eye of Michela (Romana Maggiora Vergano). Convinced he needs a release, she practically drags him to the town’s weekly gathering: a ritual where villagers pay homage to Matteo (Giulio Feltri), a withdrawn fifteen-year-old they call an angel whose embrace promises to lift all pain and sorrow.
Sergio quickly realizes that the villagers’ devotion — particularly that of Matteo’s father and the town’s elders — is far from benevolent. Determined to protect Matteo, he draws closer to the boy — yet this very proximity awakens the community’s darker impulses. The film uses this escalating tension to offer a sharp meditation on the dangers of projecting personal sorrow onto another, particularly when that burden falls on someone so young. As Sergio struggles to shield the “angel of Remis,” the village’s rituals and secrets unfold with a relentless intensity, revealing the chilling consequences of misplaced faith and collective obsession.
Strippoli paces the film with precision, letting us settle into the rhythms of village life for the first hour — observing the villagers’ uneasy cheer, their subtle routines — before the tension gradually tightens and the story begins to spiral. The slow-burn approach makes the final hour’s horrors hit harder, giving the film’s moral and psychological stakes a satisfying emotional weight.
Layered into the suspense is Remis’s own haunted past: fifteen years earlier, a train derailment claimed numerous lives, leaving scars that still linger in the village. The townspeople’s fixation on Matteo is entwined with this collective grief, giving the story a folkloric, almost mythic quality. Add in the stirrings of adolescence in Matteo himself—his growing awareness, confusion, and emerging identity—and the boy’s impossible position becomes even more charged and tense.
Riondino and Feltri deliver knockout performances as Sergio and Matteo, respectively, while the villagers themselves are pitch-perfect. They make Remis feel lived-in, and it’s that very ordinariness that makes the village feel quietly menacing. Even in casual moments, you sense something held back, a shadow behind their smiles, as if the town itself is watching and waiting.
It has the bones of a classic, but beats with a distinctly Italian heart, steeped in atmosphere and local trauma. An American remake seems inevitable, though translating Strippoli’s vision for a new audience while keeping its full intensity intact would require exceptional skill.
Echoing the giants of the genre while forging something singular, The Holy Boy is a slow-burning, enigmatic nightmare — a story of grief made tangible and a saviour no child should ever be asked to bear.
VERDICT:
The Holy Boy received its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival as a Midnight Screening. This film has a market screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival this week and will make its North American premiere at the milestone 20th edition of Fantastic Fest.
