The current crop of cinematic folk-horror hasn't yielded much of a harvest in terms of quality. Perhaps the 21st century just isn't a good fit for this sub-genre, which had its heyday (or hay day) in the '70s, particularly in Britain. The cream of this crop amounts to a handful of movies and TV shows made in the UK in that post-flower-power decade that saw many turn away from the progress of the modern world and embrace "the old ways." As such, folk-horror has become inextricably linked with beige and corduroy.
For his second feature, writer/director Daniel Kokotajlo takes us back to that era for his folk-horror Starve Acre, adapted from the novel by Andrew Michael Hurley. It certainly gets the setting right, and its leads - Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark - look like products of the '70s; you can't accuse either of this pair of possessing an "iPhone face."
At the point we meet married couple Richard (Smith) and Juliette (Clark), they've recently located from the hustle and bustle of Leeds to Richard's childhood home in rural Yorkshire with their young son Owen (Arthur Shaw). Owen is a troubled child, claiming a figure named Jack is "whistling" to him and commanding him to commit anti-social acts. When Owen injures a horse at a local fair in a truly harrowing sequence for animal lovers, his parents bring him to a psychiatrist in the hopes that their son can receive the treatment he needs. Their world is shattered when Owen succumbs to a fatal asthma attack.
If this early setup evokes Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Kokotajlo doesn't do much to dismiss such comparisons. As with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in that grief-laden classic, Richard and Juliette drift apart as the former throws himself into a restoration project, not in scenic Venice but on his own land. Local lore has it that a tree is buried under the land, one which was once believed to be a gateway between our world and...well, somewhere else. In digging for the tree, using his estranged and abusive father's notes as guidance, Richard comes across the bones of a creature that seems to resemble a rabbit or a hare, but which we soon learn is something far more sinister. Meanwhile Juliette comes under the influence of a couple of elderly mystics who claim to be able to put her in touch with the spirit of Owen.
Kokotajlo's debut feature Apostasy drew on his experiences of growing up in a Jehovah's Witness family. For his follow-up Kokotajlo has opted for less grounded material yet continues to examine the controlling aspects of faith and how it can be abused as a means of exploiting the vulnerable. The dynamic between the scientific Richard and the increasingly spiritual Juliette reminded me of Felix Van Groeningen's Belgian drama The Broken Circle Breakdown, in which a couple similarly follow disparate paths in the wake of the loss of a child. The difference here is that it's ironically Richard's scientific quest that leads him to quite literally unearth something supernatural. With everything he believed in suddenly shattered, Richard is compelled to embrace this new knowledge and follow it down whatever path it leads him, no matter how darkly lit it may be.
Kokotajlo captures the spirit of '70s British folk-horror by largely sticking to the sort of filmmaking techniques that were available at the time, save for a certain effect that requires digital manipulation. We get lots of slow zooms, and the editing patterns are of the more patient variety of decades past. Kokotajlo never actually tells us we're in the '70s, and there are no signifying needle drops or news reports on background TVs, but it's a period of time that can't be confused with any other. Richard and Juliette's fractured relationship might be read as a commentary on the decade itself, torn between embracing tradition and moving forward, and the scenes of Juliette chanting mantras are contrasted with the then new-fangled technology used to scan her troubled son's mind.
What's most distinctive about Starve Acre is how the film refuses to judge its protagonists as their grief leads them down a dark and sinister path. As an audience we can disapprove of their newfound beliefs and the ways in which they seem to allow themselves to be manpulated but as with the Jehovah's Witnesses of his previous film, Kokotajlo never explicitly condemns Richard and Juliette. Matthew Herbert's score swells with ethereal wonder in moments of horror, reminding us that while we may recoil from what we're seeing, for Richard and Juliette it's a spiritual rebirth. It's similar to how John Williams scores Richard Dreyfuss boarding the UFO at the end of Close Encounters; while we might question and even condemn Dreyfuss's decision to leave his family for the uncertainty of an alien life, the score is fully on his side.
For much of Starve Acre I was primed for it to follow the same route as Pet Sematary and was relieved when it took a different turn. And yet it shares the same theme as Stephen King's work, asking us if we could put aside everything we believe, along with our morality, if we thought it might allieviate our grief.
Directed by: Daniel Kokotajlo
Starring: Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Erin Richards, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder, Arthur Shaw
