The Yorkshire Dales have always made for a hauntingly beautiful landscape. The barren lands evoke an uneasiness but there's also something magical about seeing the national park stretch beyond the horizon. Director Daniel Kokotajlo, coming off the back of his BAFTA-nominated debut Apostasy (2017), adapts the Yorkshire Dale-set folklore novel Starve Acre with middling effect.
Leaning into the history of British folk horror, the book and film adaptation is set in the 70s, with Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette Willoughby (Morfydd Clark) moving to Richard's childhood home in the moors with their young son (Arthur Shaw). Clutching his inhaler everywhere he goes, Owen is an unassuming boy – until he commits a violent act out in public.
This isn't the first incident, as Richard and Juliette discuss Owen's troubles with a local doctor; particularly how the young lad has been hearing noises and voices. Escaping to the idyllic moors was meant to do the family good. But of course things only get much worse. Owen dies from an asthma attack, and the couple spiral into grief.
Unsurprisingly Smith and Clark are the film's highlight, each delivering outstanding performances. A lot of time is spent apart—Richard digs up the nearby fields in search of a lost relic, and Juliette struggles to sleep and accepts the help of occultist neighbours—but in scenes shared, they're mesmerising. Their standout scene has Smith deliver a brutal accusation at Clark's character, whose expressive eyes evoke thoughts and feelings words would fail to do.
It's a shame then that the rest of Starve Acre fails to reach those heights. The visuals attempt to evoke films of the 70s but never fully commits like Enys Men (2022) does. Shot on digital and then printed on a 35mm negative, there are some wonderfully murky colours at play, and zoom-ins typically seen in films of the era are peppered throughout the film. But some shots have been cleaned up too much in post-production, and modern shots with super smooth movements and shallow depth of field clash with the 70s visual language on display.
In regards to the horror, whilst there are some effectively creepy slow-burns and one particularly well-done jump scare, most of the set-pieces amount to cheap LOUD NOISE frights. Most frustrating, however, is the story. Several narrative strands and plot developments weave in and out of focus, and barely come together by the end credits. As the final act leans fully into supernatural chaos, it undoes all of the themes around grief with an ending that simplifies the entire narrative into a shallow conclusion.
Starve Acre might satisfy those hungry for British folklore horror, but there's no denying that this serving is undercooked. At the very least, Smith and Clark prove yet again that they're arguably the most exciting and absorbing actors working in the industry today.
Starve Acre releases in UK and Irish cinemas on 6th September.
