Five-year-old Owen lives on a remote farm on the Yorkshire moors, where he hears a strange whistling noise and begins to act in an odd fashion. His archaeologist father is impressed that he has collected the bones of a hare from the grounds of their property and that he might be following in his footsteps. More worryingly the boy talks about Jack Grey, a spirit entity that takes on the shape of a hare.
Slowly, but inevitably there is a descent into our worst nightmares, where the local folkloric history of Jack Grey, and the hanging tree, brood over the family like the moorland mist. These were stories documented in a booklet by Richard’s late father who subjected him to ritual abuse when he was a child.
Like the protagonists in Don’t Look Now (1973), the father, Richard (Matt Smith) and mother, Juliette (Morfydd Clark) are consumed by grief. Richard copes with it by being obsessed with his research and literally digging up the roots of the mysterious forces that are acting on the family. Meanwhile his wife seeks solace from a local spiritualist and comes under the influence of the ancient mysteries that are bonded to this landscape.
Based on the novel of the same name by Andrew Michael Hurley, the film finely balances the domestic life of the family with the beautiful scenery that can quickly turn into a dark landscape where the darkest fantasies can erupt and ensnare your mind and body.
At its heart is the creepy image of the hare, a creature well known in folklore as a shapeshifter, that by its very shy nature and unusual looping locomotion instils an ancient fear in anyone who catches sight of them. Here the hare is grotesquely re-born and fills the void of the couple’s grief.
The cinematography, set designs and costumes all position the action in the 1970s, where the lack of mobile phones or computers isolates them more than they would be today. Director Daniel Kokotajlo, also evokes the scary mood of the Public Information films of that period that warned of the danger of strangers, playing with fire, electricity substations, swimming in rivers and ponds and traffic hazards. It certainly plays on the fears of pagan superstition and ritual that are the key elements of The Wicker Man (1973). Kokotaljo also acknowledges the influence of Nigel Kneale’s TV production of Murrain, an episode of the Against the Crowd series, that features an old woman living in a ramshackle cottage who is blamed for the mysterious death of local livestock. It can also be compared and contrasted with Charlotte Colbert’s film She Will (2021) where real and fantasy or the supernatural is blurred, and the main protagonist becomes a conduit for the forces of nature to avenge the abuse of herself and the cries of long dead witches.
Starve Acre never explains in any detail the folklore of the farm, as it comes from veiled mutterings and glimpses of Richard’s fathers’ book. Are the mysterious forces the product of their grief and imagination? Or are they real occult forces? The film does not explain but whatever the cause they do have murderous consequences, which add a splash of red to the muted 1970s brown and green colour palette of the cinematography.
* Until early October 2024 the BFI is running a season of Roots, Rituals and Phantasmagoria, curated by Daniel Kokotajlo, director of Starve Acre, that will include many folk horror films including Don’t Look Now and Murrain.
Reviewed by Nigel Watson
