Starve Acre weaves together a familiar yet haunting British folk-horror narrative. In it, a man confronts dark, long-buried family secrets amidst the eerie, windswept expanse of the North Yorkshire Moors. The film’s remote setting adds an unsettling layer to the story, amplifying the isolation and creeping dread that define the genre. Morfydd Clark, known for her captivating performance in Saint Maud, once again brings quiet intensity to the screen. As a mother consumed by the devastation of grief, her portrayal is imbued with a nuanced vulnerability. Clark masterfully conveys a deep, simmering sorrow, holding the audience’s gaze as her character teeters between despair and unravelling. Even as the film spirals into a more fantastical—and arguably more chaotic—final act, Clark remains the emotional anchor, giving the film an emotional weight that lingers. On the other hand, Matt Smith takes a bolder approach, with an attempted Yorkshire accent that sometimes distracts from the atmosphere rather than enhances it. His brooding presence, marked by moments of intensity and introspection, is overemphasised by a camera that too often lingers in tight close-ups, almost intruding on the subtlety his performance has conveyed. The film’s eclectic and experimental soundtrack serves as a pulsating undercurrent, heightening tension and disorienting the viewer in all the right moments. It imbues the film with a surreal, dreamlike quality that compliments the folk-horror elements. However, this atmosphere is undermined by introducing a questionable if not laughable animatronic/CGI creature, which feels artificial despite its intended menace and diminishes the immersive experience. What could have been a powerful visual metaphor instead borders on the uncanny, pulling viewers out of the otherwise grounded horror. In the end, Starve Acre offers genuine emotional depth and atmospheric tension moments. Still, it falters when it veers too sharply into surrealism without the visual craftsmanship to back it up.

There is something wonderfully matter-of-fact about the horror of *Starve Acre*. Richard returns to the place where his father abused him, starts digging for the remains of an ancient oak and discovers that the family folklore he might reasonably have preferred to leave buried was, inconveniently, not metaphorical. Daniel Kokotajlo's film understands one of folk horror's most useful principles: the past does not need your belief before it starts causing trouble. Richard and Juliette are already breaking apart following the death of their son Owen. Richard retreats into the earth, literally excavating the land and his childhood, while Juliette repeatedly stares across the fields towards something the film often refuses to show us. Those wide compositions matter. The landscape is visible in its entirety, yet whatever has taken hold of the family remains frustratingly difficult to locate. It makes the openness feel more oppressive, not less. Then there is the hare. Richard finds its remains near the buried roots and keeps them in a box, because apparently nobody in folk horror has yet established a sensible household policy concerning mysterious animal skeletons. As sinew and fungus begin rebuilding it, *Starve Acre* moves from psychological unease into something much older and nastier. Dandelion Jack, the spirit attached to the land and Richard's family history, operates according to ritual rather than morality. That distinction matters. Calling it evil almost lets everybody off too easily. The rules require sacrifice, and the film steadily reveals Richard's abusive father as another participant in an obligation passed from one generation to the next. Richard has inherited more than trauma. He has inherited unfinished business. The clever cruelty is that this supernatural intrusion also begins pulling Richard and Juliette back together. Their shared grief has made communication almost impossible, yet as the ritual takes hold they gradually start acting as a couple again, eventually understanding one another with barely a word. Reconciliation would normally be encouraging. Here it means somebody should probably hide the hammer. *Starve Acre* becomes increasingly brutal, and its final transformation deliberately offers little emotional comfort. This is proper, soil-under-the-fingernails folk horror: old land, old obligations and the horrible discovery that sometimes digging up your roots is exactly the wrong thing to do. --- Reviewed by FolknHell, the folk horror film podcast · folknhell com Hear the full FolknHell podcast discussion of Starve Acre: folknhell com/starve-acre-rabbit-trap-double-bill-review along with our other reviews, transcripts and episodes.