Starve Acre

BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! Starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark, there is something phantasmal within director Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre, a nudging and barging from other entities as you watch. A piece of Hereditary will seem to manifest, or a scene from The Witch. Folk horror got blended to smooth perfection by Hot Fuzz, but this is more like that stew full of body parts in Conan the Barbarian. Whole horror films seem to bob into view and then roll away. One moment you are watching Hellraiser, the next, The Ninth Gate.

The twists in tone actually started to draw incredulous laughter rather than suspense in my otherwise gripped auditorium. No matter. The folk horror playbook is used here wonderfully, and expanded upon in a rich and consistent way, even if the wild ideas bang together like boxcars here and there. 

A young family lives on a blasted heath—Juliette (Morfydd Clark), her husband Richard (Matt Smith), and their young son Owen (Arthur Shaw). They have returned from the city to Richard’s recently inherited ancestral home, Starve Acre, which they feel will be a good environment for Owen. 

Their world is rendered creepily by Kokotajlo; 70s cars, knitwear, and rain. From the first scene, there is a sense of unease about things. We open on Juliette and Richard lying out in the grass at a village fete. They discuss getting a babysitter so they can go for a walk, but there is something off about the conversation. Their voices sound thick, sleep-like. They hear screams, which they follow to find Owen has maimed a donkey, blinding it with a stick.

This unsettling, Equus-lite tee-off leads us nicely into the plot proper. As Juliet and Richard seek help for their troubled son, the shadowy history of the land starts to intrude on their lives in  some very bizarre ways.