Movie Review: STARVE ACRE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 26th, 2024 / 03:11 AM

STARVE ACRE movie poster | ©2024 Brainstorm Media

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Erin Richards, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder, Melanie Kilburn, Arthur Shaw, Roger Barclay
Writer: Daniel Kokotajlo, based on the novel by Andrew Michael Hurley
Director: Daniel Kokotajlo
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: July 26, 2024 (theatrical and VOD)

Based on Andrew Michael Hurley’s 2019 novel, STARVE ACRE is set in contemporary northern England.

It begins with a poem, “The Dandelion,” by Neil Willoughby, which we observe is actually an invocation for a kind of devil. We’ll find out more about the poem’s author by and by.

Meanwhile, university professor Richard (Matt Smith), his wife Juliette (Morfydd Clark) and their young son Owen (Arthur Shaw) have moved from the big city to the large, somewhat isolated farmhouse Richard inherited from his late parents. They’ve been here two years when we meet them.

Little Owen is disturbed at night. He tells his mom Juliette that he has heard “whistling” from “Jack Grey.” Owen suffers from asthma, but that’s not all. After a shocking incident at a village fair, Juliette wants to take Owen for psychiatric evaluation. Richard goes along grudgingly, seeing this as a sign of something less than unconditional love for their child on Juliette’s part.

Then there’s further calamity. Richard becomes obsessed with uncovering the roots of a long-gone oak tree near the property line; Juliette’s sister Harrie (Erin Richards) comes to stay.

For a while, it seems that the only thing keeping Juliette and Richard’s marriage together is that they don’t talk enough to dissolve it. But then Richard unearths something that at first seems mundane but becomes very odd indeed.

Directed and written by Daniel Kokotajlo, STARVE ACRE has some intriguing nuances. For instance, Juliette is relatively open to modern science (like psychiatry) and the possibility of the supernatural. Richard, on the other hand, is passionate about tangible objects, but hates the idea of therapy, and hates folklore even more.

For genre fans, the casting is alluring, with Smith’s DOCTOR WHO/HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, Clark’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER/SAINT MAUD/CRAWL and Richards’s GOTHAM credentials to recommend them.

The more we learn about Richard, the more we feel for him, and Smith invites our empathy. Clark is unforced in Juliette’s swift transitions between despair and tentative hope, and Richards is appropriately supportive and concerned. Shaw is fine as young Owen. Robert Emms, Sean Gilder and Melanie Kilburn are all convincing in smaller roles.

There’s a touch of THE WICKER MAN here. Filmmaker Kokotajlo is successful in evoking a sense of timelessness in the countryside surroundings. Excising a local cult that was part of the novel seems a wise narrative choice.

There is a major problem with a hare that is “played” by a combination of practical and digital effects. It’s not that the hare is put in perilous situations, or is shown to do anything that hares don’t normally do, but these are not easily trainable animals. Fair enough, and the respective effects departments do excellent work. Still, we can’t help noticing that this isn’t alive in the same way as the human performers who are in frame with the creature, and it becomes distracting.

A more global issue is that exactly who wants what, why they want it, and when they started wanting it is a bit blurry. But then, STARVE ACRE is very much in the spirit of a folktale, which can also be vague on these points. In the end, it feels rather like we’ve come in out of the rain to a north country pub, and heard an old yarn spun by a local.

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