Review: Hammer Horror's WAKE WOOD

Despite Let Me In having Vampires and The Resident having Christopher Lee, the resurrected Hammer Film Production's third kick at the can (at least by the standards of release dates) seems to find things feeling a bit more gothic, rustic and, well, horrific.  This is the real re-birth of the imprint, and it demonstrates it again and again with its icky-goopy rendering of this on-screen.  The film is  set in the eponymous small Irish town which has a supernatural secret or three which are only thinly disguised by modern wind turbines that seem to stand sentinel over over the the old forest.   Enter grieving couple Patrick and Louise who desire to plant new roots in the small village after losing their 8 year old daughter to the vicious attack of a violent canine.  He is a vet, she a pharmacist, and one read of the film could be a wacky horror take on Seducing Doctor Lewis, that is to say, how far the town in wiling to go to secure a good doctor for the local farmers.  The devil's pact is that the local reverend, a delightful yet restrained Timothy Spall (Britain's national treasure in the humble opinion of this writer), has the ability to raise the dead, if only for three days to provide a sense of closure to those who lost someone under extreme circumstances.  The couple, whose relationship remains quite strained by the death of their only child, jump at the opportunity, and seem to break each of the established rules with impunity and reap the consequences.