Review: Starve Acre

Director:  Daniel Kokotajlo

Stars: Morfydd Clark, Matt Smith, Erin Richards

Meet Juliette (Morfydd Clark) and Richard (Matt Smith), a couple living in the dreary, wet wilds of ’70s Yorkshire with their 10-year-old son Owen (Arthur Shaw). While Juliette busies herself with the day-to-day of housewifery at their rundown moorland farmhouse, Richard’s out digging endless holes in the garden in an effort to kickstart something interesting in his academic endeavours. Owen, meanwhile, is just a weird little wrong’un, something the couple quickly notice after he gouges out a pony’s eyes at a village fete. Welcome to Daniel Kokotajlo’s moody sophomore feature; a technically impressive, involving and by turns darkly hilarious addition to the great trove of British folk horror.

One of the main draws here is Morfydd Clark’s return to horror after grabbing everyone’s attention in the stark and spiky Saint Maud. Her Juliette is at a quieter if no less twitchy register than old Maud, yet Kokotajlo has plenty of darkness for her to investigate as Starve Acre unfolds. Adapted from a novel by Andrew Michael Hurley, there’s a knotty local heritage to unpick that is snarled up in Richard’s family history. Something’s buried in the land just waiting for him to dig it up afresh. Soon past and present traumas are being manifested right out of the clods of earth beneath Richard’s spade.

As metaphors for grief and trauma go, these are not particularly subtle, but the manner in which they’re played are compelling, especially as one starts to speculate on how far Kokotajlo is prepared to take them. Excavating the bones of a long-dead hare, Richard secludes himself in terrified reverence to the skeleton, which starts growing back it’s nervous system. The lapine resurrection directly fills a void that the grieving man is wrestling with. The need to fill these absent spaces inside ourselves is something Starve Acre both morbidly and mournfully considers, and Smith is particularly effective at giving these confused emotions a face and body. And actor prone to bouncier, livelier work, it’s a small wonder watching him operate at this contained, insular level.

Inarguably – and fittingly – the film’s greatest star isn’t even alive. Hinging this folk horror piece on a bit of animatronic/puppet work is an inspired gambit, one that positions Kokotajlo, for this outing at least, as a spiritual heir to the great Jan Švankmajer (check out the likes of Alice and, particularly in this case, Little Otik). As Juliette and Richard become the custodians of this heathenous hare, Starve Acre dares casual cinemagoers to blink. My eager advice would be to just go with it and enjoy the challenge.

The irony is that, for horror hounds, Starve Acre might not go far enough. It’s second half, while pleasingly wild, also feels increasingly conventional. Exposition is peppered in cryptically from a dossier belonging to Richard’s deceased father, or by his evidently mad uncle Gordon (Sean Gilder), while the inevitable need for sacrifices fulfils the genre needs for blood-letting and positions it more comfortably in the legacy of The Wicker Man. Having wormed its way through its first two acts, the machinations of the third feel a tad familiar, and this is where, one feels, Kokotajlo really needed to let loose with the bolder creative choices already on display.

Still, this is an incredibly impressive piece of work. A Northern British rejoinder to the oddball A24 offering Lamb of a couple of years ago (which still haunts conversations in this household). It’s also worth taking note of Matthew Herbert’s versatile and compelling score here, which tilts between gentle, almost whimsical harp lullabies and some outright bombastic industrial crescendos. As with most aspects of the film’s design and construction, the wider sound design throughout is impeccable. It is perhaps only the story itself that feels a little too locked in to certain genre traditions.