STARVE ACRE: 3 ½ STARS. “will likely divide audiences into two camps.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Starve Acre,” a new British horror film starring Matt Smith, and now on VOD, a family’s idyllic, rural Yorkshire life is disrupted when their son starts acting strangely. Is there something wrong with the boy, or is his behavior tied to a demonic spirit called Dandelion Jack Grey, and the power of an ancient oak tree on the property?
CAST: Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Erin Richards, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder. Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo.
REVIEW: The folk horror in “Starve Acre” comes slowly, building gradually before director Daniel Kokotajlo ushers in a disturbing climax. Until then the film’s atmosphere of bleakness and dread hangs over the proceedings like a shroud.
The leads, Smith and Clark burrow in, mining emotional hurt as they work through deep seeded grief and the hidden horrors and ancient powers of their land. Their performances set the film’s retrained tone. There are no jump scares or moments of gore.
Instead, as the movie gets more perplexing (and a little sillier), their quiet desperation becomes suffocating. Even as the going gets weird, they stay chillingly earthbound. Until they don’t, and even then, those performances, combined with the film’s muted color palette, creates a subtle but strange effect.
“Starve Acre” is a mood piece with flavorings of “Don’t Look Now” and “The Wicker Man” woven throughout. Its most shocking image is its last one, a moment that will likely divide audiences into two camps, the WTF crowd and those who get the connection between nature and folk horror.
Either way, the cumulative effect of the images, performances and Matthew Herbert’s anxiety inducing score is a powerful depiction of grief and the manifestation of the uncanny.
