Starve Acre (2024) Countryside Chiller is a Blast from the Past (Review)

The proud county of Yorkshire seems to be in the middle of a horror resurgence as, following the low-key chiller The Moor we now have this, an oak-aged folk-horror that isn’t shy about its classical influences from British horrors of yore. Director Daniel Kokotajlo’s mix of occult, supernatural, and psychological horror may be tried and tested, but while this wears its ’70s BBC ghost story/unostentatious Hammer inspiration quite clearly on its sleeve, it assuredly goes beyond simple homage to stand alone as its own film.

Taking one of the most reliable premises in the book, Starve Acre follows married couple Richard and Juliette (played by Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark), who are living in an isolated community in the Yorkshire countryside. Their lives get significantly lonelier when their son, seemingly at random, commits an act of violence that brings to light some strange psychological troubles, but this takes an abrupt turn when their son dies very suddenly from an asthmatic attack. This leaves Juliette relying on her “towney” sister Harrie to look after her, while Richard goes digging about on their land to find the roots of a tree that’s known in local myth as a centuries-old meeting place for folks that was also used for hangings.

In hindsight, the central story actually leaves quite a lot to the imagination, but what threatened to be a challenging watch was made completely seamless by how engaging the two leads are. Morfydd Clark continues to prove herself as a mysteriously captivating lead in a role that continues the weirdo energy she brought to her breakthrough role in Saint Maud, and Matt Smith seems to be transitioning quite gracefully into a darker, boldly uncharismatic performer in roles that are poles apart from his boyish glee as Doctor Who. In his middle age, his youthful looks have become weathered, resulting in a production lead by two great actors with very interesting faces for this kind of dusty, battered looking film. 

Starve Acre‘s obsession with the Earth and hidden roots extends to the level of emphasis that Kokotajlo puts on the landscape. A lot of this film consists of empty shots of the family house against the sky and the environment surrounding them, and this very intentionally focussed preservation of atmosphere makes these tertiary moments absolutely gripping. While it’s not quite as psychedelic as Mark Jenkins’ Enys Men (a film that’s almost entirely comprised of these kinds of scenes), it does form a very interesting parallel to The Moor as, where Chris Cronin harnessed the landscape to punctuate just how endless and consuming the Yorkshire moors are, Starve Acre has an inverse effect. The landscape feels isolating and closed off, like Richard and Juliette’s world is ever shrinking after their son’s death, forcing them to instead look down into the Earth for answers. Like Enys Men, the landscape reflects the characters’ interiority back at them, and it makes for a truly investing watch when paired with Matthew Herbert’s superbly discordant score. I think Starve Acre’s greatest point of reference though, is Robert Altman’s underseen psychological chiller Images – another moody, windswept drama that probes a thorny relationship dynamic between man and wife. Like Images, Starve Acre also makes use of wonderfully distorted anamorphic lenses to render the British countryside an alien, other-worldly environment to equally beautiful effect. 

That’s not to say the film is all build-up and no bite, as a gleefully weird development into sort-of monster movie territory and light body horror takes the story into increasingly odd places, even verging into Stephen King territory. At a time when a lot of current horror films seem to lean far too heavily on sound and cheap shocks to maintain a sense of “understated” fear (which is shorthand for the film not being inherently scary on its own), Kokotajlo displays an adept sense of restraint when it comes to where and when to jolt the audience – knowing full well that the isolated, headspacey sense of location and atmosphere are dense enough to carry the film. When Starve Acre does shift into scarier territory the scenes are brilliantly conceptualised, relying on smart editing, colour, and mysteriously motivated camera movement to construct not just an effective scare, but a well-earned one. There’s a séance scene that summarises the strengths of Starve Acre’s grasp on horror, achieving the rare feat of unnerving you when you aren’t expected to be, and allowing the fear to creep up on you – which brings to mind the works of Nicholas Roeg.

Its final crescendo of events seems designed to be discussed and mulled over, never revealing all its cards. There’ll surely be audiences who feel let down by the rather sudden turn into ambiguity, but if you’re fully immersed in its strange progression of character, along with the consuming atmosphere (as I was), then this is a rivetingly sturdy drama. Starve Acre is a film that’s in close dialect with so many other old and new films that share the same space with in the genre, and as a horror fan this kept me enthralled until the end – proving it to be one of the year’s finest horrors so far.

Jake’s Archive – Starve Acre (2024)