Starve Acre

The film is based upon Andrew Michael Hurley’s book of the same name, celebrated for the quality of its prose about the English countryside. Kokotajlo’s movie honors this with expressive photography that pulls off the trick of daylight horror brilliantly. The countryside of Starve Acre is an oppressive force. The farm is hemmed in by low hills and there is a constant cover of thick low clouds. I honestly don’t recall a single sunbeam. The effect is of the cast being crushed between the sky and the land.

The soundtrack is moody and varied, and the actors are excellent throughout, especially the glorious Clark. A million miles from Galadriel in Rings of Power, Morfydd Clark really is gripping. Matt Smith is great, too, as Richard, as good as he is in seemingly everything. Here he feels very different to earlier roles, layering a rock-solid northern English accent onto an understated depiction of descent into obsession.  

It’s easy to look at the English countryside, where every divot has a legend, and wonder how deep folk can go to mine its horrors. It doesn’t have the raw entertainment power of Marvel and DC, but it’s definitely its own genre with weight and meaning and something to say about the things the soul circles. The best thing about Starve Acre is that it adds substantially to folk horror, both in terms of nuggets of bizarro action and in hinting at delicious Lovecraftian mythoi sunk in the soil and twisting like roots.

I’ll happily admit to not quite understanding the film as I left. I enjoyed its surreal tinge and the thickening atmosphere but came away a little disappointed with the wavering tone, wondering if this might have real blockbuster legs if it were a little more even. As it stands, this is a fantastically enigmatic horror film done beautifully well.

Starve Acre screened at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival.