You can smell what’s happening in “Starve Acre” before you puzzle the rest of it out. The grassy, peaty dampness of its rural Yorkshire setting seems to hit the olfactory glands without any scratch-and-sniff assistance, only intensifying as the film unearths its literally deep-buried secrets. Daniel Kokotajlo’s impressive second feature unfolds in a vein of British folk horror that has been popular of late — with films from Ben Wheatley’s “A Field in England” to Mark Jenkins’s “Enys Men” all tapping into that retro “Wicker Man” eeriness — but rarely with such rattling sensory specificity or formal refinement. Starring Morfydd Clark and Matt Smith as former townies unprepared for the full burden of lore they inherit with their desolate farmhouse, it’s a tale of quite outlandish fantastical leaps, grounded by the chills it also finds in common weather and wildlife.
Premiering in the main competition at this year’s London Film Festival,...
Premiering in the main competition at this year’s London Film Festival,...
- 10/20/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
"I can either pull focus, or I can move the camera." Opening in select art house theaters this week is Enys Men, a one-of-a-kind, chilling experimental horror film made by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkins. It's his follow-up to the festival hit Bait (which is finally getting a US release also this wek) and it premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year. In honor of the US opening this weekend, Neon has revealed a 14-minute behind-the-scenes featurette for the film. Set in 1973 on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast, a wildlife volunteer's daily observations of a rare flower slowly turn into a metaphysical journey that forces her as well as the viewer to question what is real and what is nightmare. The film stars Mary Woodvine as the volunteer working on the island, with a small cast including Edward Rowe and Flo Crowe. This is a fascinating inside look at Jenkins' process,...
- 3/31/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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