Folk horror meets generational family trauma in this confusingly intense exercise in sophisticated campfire ghost storytelling. It’s the bleak 1970s in Yorkshire, England, where academically embattled archaeologist Richard (Matt Smith) has moved his wife, Juliette (Morfydd Clark), and possibly schizophrenic young son, Owen (Arthur Shaw), to his own childhood home, partly because it has some sort of anthropological significance and partly because he believes Owen’s perilous mental state (he hears voices) might be relieved with a change of scenery, though a house where he himself was subjected to parental abuse hardly sounds like an improvement over anywhere. Owen’s situation worsens, exacerbated by the mutterings of a local named Gordon (Sean Gilder), Richard’s father’s best friend, who believes the estate, called Starve Acre, is the realm of some kind of pagan demon. 

Suffice to say that things go from creepy to tragic before you can say Jack Grey, which is the nickname of this evil entity. Grief, of course, drives Richard and Juliette farther apart, with Richard applying himself to his work as a kind of distraction—or is it actually to confront the trauma at the base of his own obvious psychosis? Eventually, digging on the site of a vanished supposedly possessed oak tree on the property, he uncovers something sinister that leads him to a box of his father’s possessions containing the skeleton of a hare that starts to come to life in front of his eyes. Could this be Jack Grey in the (putrefied) flesh? 

Such questions never stop presenting themselves because, while the screenplay is based on a novel, director Daniel Kokotajlo seems more interested in summoning delectably gruesome set pieces than making those set pieces serve an organic story. Owen’s sad situation is never satisfyingly connected to the hare’s terrorizing impulses or his father’s deteriorating mental state, which actually seems detached from any concern for his immediate family. Moreover, the dialogue feels purposely muffled, making it difficult to tell what people are saying half the time—call it mumblecore horror. Starve Acre is a handsomely mounted production with a classic gothic atmosphere, but it doesn’t really take you anywhere. It sort of does the rounds and then just leaves on the side of a dark road in the middle of the night. What exactly are you scared of?

Opens Sept. 11 in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Starve Acre home page in Japanese

photo (c) House Starve Acre Limited, Acre Film LLC, British Broadcasting Corporation and The British Film Institute 2023