Director: Daniel Kokotajlo
Screenplay:
Starring: Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark
Country: UK
Running Time: 98m
Year: 2023

We often describe films as gritty, but Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre is so gloomily gritty you can almost taste the mud Matt Smith endlessly digs.

The mise en scene, for a while, is the film’s strongest theme. Grainy, bleached often twisted frames. Damaged, almost. Composition is occasionally, frequently odd as are the serious, uniformly excellent performances especially from Smith and Morfydd Clark. An echoey, mischievous theme from Matthew Herbert complements the (largely brown) cinematography; all conspiring to an impish tone of complacency. The uneasy sense of an unseen, old, malevolent force is as inescapable as the doom closing in on the couple.

It just feels wrong. As it should. There’s no warmth, and there’s space between characters, which will only grow. Tragedy strikes and the couple become entwined in a disturbing folk legend that’s probably been tracking their family for a while and that’s all before Smith appears to resurrect a hare. This thing is creepy as heck. Probably counts Black Philip, the goat from Robert Eggers’ The Witch, as a close friend. It’s a tangible and satisfying film, with echoes of Eggers’ work as well as Don’t Look Now and The Exorcist.

The problem is, all of those films are far better than Starve Acre. Once the considerably effective scene-building is done, the story drifts. Matt Smith is marvellous from start to finish, but his delicately blunt performance is eventually squandered. Morfydd Clark is equally good, but it is from her character that the fault line in the film starts to run. Clark’s efforts are unrewarded as her character and the narrative reveal themselves to be thumpingly predictable. Despite the delicious efforts to rough up the film, the script is toothless.

If we look at the scruffy gems of the folky sub-genre, like the before-mentioned The Witch and Don’t Look Now or Ari Aster’s extraordinary Midsommar, the narratives are as twisted as the visuals. They directly threaten the viewer. In Starve Acre, we merely observe. The sense of disquiet, so effective in the first act, transpires to be the realisation that we’ve seen all this before as plods in the manner of a TV movie.

I might be being harsh because this is such a rich multimedia sub-genre and we know how powerful a cinematic viewpoint can be. Andrew Michael Hurley’s Starve Acre source novel better weaves in the folk story lore that the film could have leaned into even more. And T.C. Eglington and Simon Davis’ Thistlebone comic strip in 2000AD is a superlative lesson in how to screw with the reader.

Starve Acre has a lot going for it. Especially that bloody hare. Such a shame the punches are pulled.

VIDEO

The best thing about Starve Acre is the first half’s cinematography. The Blu-Ray presentation ably balances detail while preserving the feeling that the negative has been chewed up and ran over. The outdoor scenes look like they were the best the production could scrape together after a bad day on set. Which of course, is precisely the idea (there’s even a ‘standard definition’ option, just to accentuate the feeling that bit further). The indoor scenes are fine but less interesting.

EXTRA FEATURES

This is an excellent run of extra features from the BFI. The audio commentary is worth a listen as they unpick the production process, easily the best part of the film. That’s complimented by a fascinating piece on the score. There’s a couple of insights into the book which hint at how much further the film could have gone, plus a couple of interviews.

The interview with The Hare Team was a standout for me. The work on the animatronic creature is fascinating; the result, as with the rest of the purposefully flawed mise en scene, creates a feeling of uncanny valley; it’s almost too good.

  • Newly recorded audio commentary by director Daniel Kokotajlo, production designer Francesca Massariol and sound designer Ben Baird
  • The Land Holds the Melody (2024, 23 mins): Starve Acre composer Matthew Herbert reveals his multilayered approach to writing film music
  • There’s Something Out There (2024, 21 mins): author Andrew Michael Hurley discusses his novel Starve Acre and the landscapes of folk horror
  • Interviews with stars Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark (2023, 10 mins)
  • Interview with The Hare Team (2023, 16 mins): an insight into the work of creature effects
  • supervisor Sharna Rothwell and lead puppeteer Aidan Cook

  • Behind-the-scenes footage (2023, 5 mins)
  • The sandwich scene (2024, 1 min): deleted scene with optional commentary from the director
  • The Hare, a Folk Song (2024, 1 min): actor Sean Gilder, who plays Gordon in the film, reads an extract from the Starve Acre novel
  • Behind-the-scenes gallery: a collection of photos and storyboard elements that shine a light on the production process
  • Stills gallery
  • Theatrical trailer
  • ***First pressing only*** Illustrated booklet with a text by director Daniel Kokotajlo; essays by Dr Adam Scovell and Catherine Spooner; notes on the special features and full credits
Starve Acre
Film
Disc/Package
3.5Overall:
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