STARVE ACRE Review: Great English Folk Horror

Parents' grief manifests into a supernatural horror in Daniel Kokotajlo's moody, slow burn Starve Acre, based on a book by Andrew Michael Hurley, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Richard (Matt Smith) has moved back to his father's estate in rural Yorkshire with his family: his wife Juliette (Morfydd Clark of Saint Maude) and their young son Ewan. He is a lecturer of archeology in a nearby university.

With his long hair and an outsider status, Richard doesn't really get along with his colleagues and neither does Ewan, who demonstrates violent tendencies. Jules is worried about their child but Richard is not.

Richard's distance from his family stems from the physical abuse he received from his father when he was a young boy. He chastises his neighbor Gordon for telling the boy about the local folktale of Jack Grey and an oak tree that can reanimate the dead. 'Country folks are backward and full of superstitions,' in his estimation. But the family can't shake off the feeling that there is something spooky about the nature that surrounds their house.

Ewan suddenly dies from an asthma attack, and it pulls Richard and Jules farther apart. Guilt stricken and grieving, Jules can hardly get out of bed and Richard spends much time alone digging through the mud in the yard. Harrie (Erin Richards), Juliette's sister, comes to stay to comfort the grieving mother. It's the séance performed by Mrs. Ford, a neighbor, that puts the idea in Jules' head that Ewan's spirit is still around.

Richard experiences a supernatural phenomenon when the bones of a hare he dug up near the oak tree of the old folklore, slowly starts to reanimate, Hellraiser-style, with tissues appearing around the bones, then organs and muscles, eyes and hair. Is he imagining things out of grief or does the folktale about the oak tree and Jack Grey contain some sort of truth?

He first hides this ungodly occurrence. But soon enough, a fully reanimated large hare is hopping around in their house. They release the hare to the wild but it comes back, wrecking havoc in the grieving parents' minds. According to Starve Acre, a research book left by Richard's father, they need three sacrifices to finish the ritual.

Smith and Clark are superb as grieving parents who are desperate to hold on to the idea of their dead son coming back, even if it takes a physical form of an animal. Cinematographer Adam Scarth’s expansive landscape shots and tinkling score by Matthew Herbert help accentuate the film’s sodden and moody tone.

Grief and the power of folklore make great combination for a creating great unsettling, atmospheric horror. Starve Acre is one of the very fine English folk horror films to come out in recent years.

The film opens Friday, July 26, in theaters and On Demand, via Brainstorm Media.