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.
It’s a remarkably effective visual and tonal trick, but what makes the film stand out is that Kokotajlo isn’t willing to stop there. Too many folk horror films veer wildly to one side of the subgenre’s spectrum or the other. Some seem almost embarrassed about their subject matter, approaching it ironically or metatextually, keeping the magical essence of the subgenre at a remove, while others are so wrapped up in lore and exposition that they explain all that magic away. Kokotajlo’s script does neither of these things. He’s not interested in telling you everything, nor is he interested in trying to make every single layer of the supernatural mystery into an overwrought metaphor for something else. From a mysterious hare that emerges (literally) from Starve Acre’s grounds to copies of old woodcuts depicting ancient ritual, this is a film both unembarrassed and thrilled to be where it is, and that creates a certain freedom. Kokotajlo is not afraid to get things weird and keep them there, nor is he afraid to let that weirdness linger, creating an oppressive and tension-laden atmosphere that’s paced deliberately, slowly and laced throughout with bleak strangeness.
Starve Acre‘s bleakness, and its oft-glacial pacing, are bold creative decisions, and like a lot of bold creative decisions, they don’t always pay off. The story requires its major characters to be in the dark about a lot of things for long stretches of time, which means the audience is left in some stretches of the film with little to do other than ponder the sadness of the story. The visual allure and sexual tension of Don’t Look Now is not present here, nor is the wicked sense of humor of The Wicker Man, and while that’s deliberate, it’s also sometimes to the film’s detriment. A story about people lost in grief, drifting lazily in sorrow while trying to reach out for any possible lifeline, is necessarily spare sometimes, and that spareness is the kind of thing that can lull some viewers out of the film for long stretches.
The thing that keeps Starve Acre afloat in these moments is its cast, led by Smith and Clark, who both take to Kokotajlo’s chosen tonal intricacies with remarkable grace. Smith uses all the steadfast, strong-jawed scowls he perfect on The Crown to great effect as a man determined to find a concrete anchor for his grief, while Clark somehow makes despondently lying in bed into a compelling act. One of the film’s great deficits is that huge chunks pass without much for her to do, but just as she did in Saint Maud, Clark proves adept at making these moments of quiet dread work for her, not against her. It’s a remarkably balanced performance that ramps up beautifully in the film’s third act, and cements Clark as one of our finest horror actresses at the moment with just a handful of genre credits.
Starve Acre is not one of those horror films that everyone going in blind will enjoy. It’s not a crowd pleaser or a popcorn thriller. It’s a steady, methodically engineered, beautifully realized meditation on the slow, persistent sting of grief, and a gentle unearthing of the things we bury deep in our souls. It will not satisfy every viewer, but those who are able to tune into its particular malevolent hum will find a remarkably atmospheric tapestry of dread, and a folk-horror essential.
Director: Daniel Kokotajlo
Writer: Daniel Kokotajlo
Starring: Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Arthur Shaw, Sean Gilder
Release Date: July 26, 2024
Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire who’s been writing about entertainment for more than a decade. His writing about movies, TV, comics, and more regularly appears at SYFY WIRE, Looper, Mental Floss, Decider, BookPage, and other outlets. He lives in Austin, Texas, and when he’s not writing he’s usually counting the days until Christmas.