Author Andrew Michael Hurley‘s 2019 novel Starve Acre was an immediate hit upon release, hearkening back to the heyday of 1970’s folk horror, with its twisted tale of a grieving academic and his wife stumbling across a history of occult activity on their land. Suitably, director Daniel Kokotajlo‘s adaptation of the novel leans just as hard on the influences of the book, evoking the BBC’s famous M.R. James Ghost Story adaptations and devilish folk films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw as it spins a simple yarn involving pagan rituals and occult sacrifices.

The result is an incredibly atmospheric and disturbing film chock full of unsettling imagery and strange phenomena. The story takes a grounded approach towards the standard folk horror tropes and finds moments of terror in the most mundane of moments. There’s an intriguing mystery running throughout proceedings, and for the most part it delivers, even if a lot of the exposition is dense and wordy.

Yet despite a strong cast (in the form of fantasy stalwarts Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark), Starve Acre never quite comes together to deliver the shocks it clearly wants to inflict. There are moments where proceedings get under the skin (a particularly upsetting moment occurs within the first 5 minutes), but these are few and fleeting, resulting in a film that offers up diminishing returns despite some strong moments of out-there weirdness.

Gorgeous cinematography by Adam Scarth and some excellent sound design do much of the heavy lifting here, whilst good performances from Smith, Clarke and the other cast-members keep things engaging, despite some uneven charactersation in places. But ultimately Starve Acre lacks the bite it needs to sustain interest over its running time, leaving many a horror fan hungry for more.

Starve Acre is released in UK cinemas on 6th September