There might come a time when I tire of the current trend/revival of folk horror films, but it's probably some way off yet.
Starve Acre has been the latest to hit cinema screens, and it ticks all the boxes: dramatic windswept rural environment (the Yorkshire moors); a 1970s setting, and accompanying colour palette of muddy browns and mossy greens; horror that has its roots in personal tragedy; themes of exhumation, sacrifice and resurrection; a chilling score that works perfectly in tandem with the images.
Matt Smith does a decent (if perhaps inadvertent) Ted Hughes impression, as an emotionally repressed archaeology lecturer compelled to dig up things that are best left buried. But it's Morfydd Clark, as his deeply traumatised wife, who truly deserves the plaudits.
Starve Acre has been criticised in some quarters for being devoid of jump scares, but, for me, that totally misses the point. This isn't some cheap, gore-laden US fright fest; it's a far more subtle film, one that progresses at a deliberately slow pace, moving inexorably to a truly, grimly memorable concluding tableau. You have to suspend disbelief on occasion, admittedly, but then it wouldn't be a horror film if you didn't.
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