The Weight of Water 2018

Featuring appearances by Erik Weihenmayer, Harlan Taney, Lonnie Bedwell, Rob Raker, Steven Mace, Timmy O’Neill, and Skyler Williams as themselves, this documentary-drama weaves a haunting, multi-layered narrative around a landmark crime and its lingering echoes through time.

Set in 1873 on Smuttynose Island, a windswept outpost among the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast, the tale begins with the brutal murders of Karen Christenson and her sister-in-law Anethe Christenson. Only Karen’s sister Maren Hontvedt survives the onslaught, a survivor who will come to occupy the center of a story that blends fear, suspicion, and unspoken desire. The convicted killer, Louis Wagner, is executed after a trial that captures the cold brutality of the era and the community’s appetite for swift justice.

In the modern frame, a newspaper photographer named Jean Janes dives into the case, traveling to Smuttynose with her husband Thomas, a celebrated poet, and joining forces with Thomas’s brother Rich, who owns a yacht, and Rich’s girlfriend Adaline. As Jean digs through archived records, she uncovers papers that appear to be written by Maren Hontvedt, offering a deeply personal account of life on the island and the events that culminated in the murders. The film then unfurls the past through Maren’s testimony, interlacing it with Jean’s present-day investigation and the emotional tension that flares between Jean and Adaline, who openly flirts with Thomas.

The historical thread paints a vivid portrait of Maren: brought from Norway to Smuttynose by a husband she does not love, she battles loneliness and sorrow while maintaining the homestead. Her spirits lift briefly with the arrival of her brother Evan and his young wife Anethe, intensifying the web of relationships on the island. Maren’s interactions with Karen, a stern sister-in-law who distrusts Maren’s living arrangements and, ultimately, her life, are charged with subtext. What begins as rivalry blurs into a dangerous longing when Maren, torn by passion and isolation, finds herself drawn toward Anethe. The tension twists further when an injured Wagner, staying at the Hontvedt home, assaults Anethe, inflaming the volatile atmosphere.

On the night of the murders, Evan and John depart the island to procure goods in Portsmouth, leaving Maren and Anethe to contend with the fragile bonds that hold the household together. Anethe reveals that she is pregnant, a secret that shifts the dynamics in the dim, storm-lashed house. As night falls, Anethe pleads to sleep in the same bed for safety, a request that Karen interprets as evidence of hidden sexuality. In a fit of rage, Maren strikes Karen with a chair, rendering her immobile. Anethe tries to escape, but Maren pursues her outdoors and ends Anethe’s life with an axe. Maren drags Anethe’s body inside and then strangles Karen to death, fleeing to a cove at first light and subsequently pointing the blame at Wagner.

The present-day storm intensifies the emotional currents aboard Rich’s yacht, where Rich’s flirtations with Jean unsettle the delicate balance of jealousy and affection among the four travelers. A dramatic sequence unfolds as Jean, driven by rivalrous emotions, pushes Adaline overboard during the tempest. Thomas and Jean plunge into the water in a bid to rescue her, Adaline is saved, but Thomas drowns in the perilous, shadowy depths. In a surreal and haunting ripple, Jean encounters visions of Anethe and Maren beneath the waves before surfacing again, clutching at survival as the storm rages around them.

The film then returns to the eighteenth century frame for a final, unsettling note: Maren’s guilt drives her to confess to the murders years after Wagner has already been hanged, yet the courts refuse to accept her confession, continuing to uphold the verdict that condemned Maren’s accused accomplice, Wagner. This closing arc underlines the film’s persistent meditation on guilt, justice, and the ways truth can be shaped by time, testimony, and memory.