The Quietly Chilling Starve Acre Will Take Root in Your Brain

Folk horror is one of the most potent horror subgenres because of its ability to explore a kind of intimate secret knowledge of the universe. It’s a form of the fear of the unknown that dominates much of the horror space, but in folk horror stories, that unknown is not perched somewhere in the cosmos. It’s right here, in the Earth beneath our feet, in the natural world we walk through, waiting to reach out and take hold of us. At its best, folk horror is an exploration of that closeness, a probing of not just how that secret knowledge can drive us mad, but how it can merge with us, change us, even make us grow. Starve Acre, the new film from Apostasy director Daniel Kokotajlo, has an innate understanding of this particular folk horror concept.
It’s a film steeped in the idea that hidden wisdom and ancient powers are not only present, but close to its characters, just barely out of their reach until they start digging for them. That understanding provides crucial, fog-thick atmosphere, but then the film goes further, digging into the emotional lives of two people who discover there’s much more to their bleak homestead than either of them dared dream.
Starve Acre is a tiny farm on the English countryside where, in the 1970s, archaeology-focused academic Richard (Matt Smith) moves his wife Jules (Morfydd Clark) and son Owen (Arthur Shaw). The farm is Richard’s ancestral home, and while the specter of his departed, cruel father still looms over the landscape, he’s determined to make it a brighter, happier place for his own son. But Starve Acre has other plans, and they present themselves when Owen begins making references to a being called “Jack Grey,” from a fairy story propagated by Richard’s dead father and, in the present day, by the family’s next-door neighbor, Gordon (Sean Gilder).
What starts as the story of a child who might have taken on some layer of supernatural influence turns tragic when Owen suddenly dies, leaving Richard and Jules awash in grief. With their marriage on a knife’s edge, the couple retreats (almost literally) to opposite sides of the farm, with Jules constantly in bed and Richard digging out in the fields in search of the property’s literal ancient roots, roots that might hold secrets to far more than just an old superstition.
The film’s 1970s setting, coupled with the muted autumnal tones provided by cinematographer Adam Scarth and the moody score by Matthew Herbert, allows Starve Acre to achieve a certain tonal shorthand with genre fans. Watching it, you’re immediately reminded of films like Nicolas Roeg’s ecstatic meditation on grief, Don’t Look Now, as well as the fabled “Unholy Trinity” of British folk horror films, Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973), which became foundational texts of the subgenre. It’s more than just homage, though. The 1970s setting offers a certain technological isolation, a slower pace to the life of the characters, and just the right amount of unsettling border between Britain’s buried Pagan past and its modern face. It’s so deliberate as to make the setting a character unto itself, transforming Starve Acre from your standard rural homestead into a kind of time capsule liminal space between what was and what is.