25 years later Claire (Sophia La Porta), now an entertainment podcaster, still harbours guilt, particularly when it appears that the man jailed for the crimes is set for release. She is approached by Danny’s father Bill (David Edward Robertson) to use her communication skills to help keep alive the search for the little boy’s body and the man responsible in prison; perhaps preying on that guilt he ropes in Claire, alongside psychic friend Alex (Mark Peachey) and Alex’s equally spiritually gifted daughter Eleanor (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips), to comb the moors, which he believes is Danny’s resting place. But as the wild terrain begins to exert an eerie hold on the group, and Bill’s obsessiveness increases, Claire begins to feel that something more than human could be behind the mystery.
Chris Cronin’s debut feature isn’t afraid to take things slow; for most of its running time, The Moor is a prolonged but beautifully acted study in grief and the need to achieve closure in the face of the most horrific emotional suffering. Only in the film’s last third do the supernatural elements really introduce themselves, but the director handles this transition seamlessly; he may save his most shocking reveal until the film’s closing moments, but the sense of dread he builds up means that The Moor’s climax is both alarming and, strangely, satisfying.
La Porta and Robertson excel in their roles; the former a woman existing via a defining life moment in her past which dictates her present, and the latter consumed with the need to find both justice and solace. There’s a nagging sense of history throughout the movie; Bill’s search recalls the desperation of the family of Moors Murders victim Keith Bennett to find the location of his burial. As such an accusation of insensitivity could be levelled at the filmmakers, but The Moor is a considered and affecting film which strikes a powerful and horrifying balance between the human and the supernatural.
A version of this review was previously published on the Bloody Flicks site.
Richard (Matt Smith), a teacher and archeologist, and his partner Juliette (Morfydd Clark) live in rural seclusion, at some point in the early 1970s (the time period is never specified beyond the visual clues of car registrations). Their young son is a troubled soul; as the film opens he has blinded a horse - recalling the character of Alan Strang in Peter Shaffer's 'Equus' - and his sleep talk is full of references to a character called Jack. Richard is concerned that his child may have learned this by listening too much to the folklore ramblings of his neighbour, Gordon (Sean Glider) and possibly Gordon's otherwordly wife (Melanie Kilburn).
One day when Richard is at work in the slightly stuffy school where he teaches, Juliette experiences something overwhelming when outside; in a possibly unrelated tragedy (although everything in Starve Acre is connected) at the same time her son dies, unaccountably. The death drives a wedge between the two parents; Richard seeks solace in archeological digs, uncovering and bringing home the skeleton of a large hare, whereas Juliette seeks the comfort of her practical sister Harrie (Erin Richards).
Richard's discovery of journals kept by his father Neil, entitled 'Starve Acre' and containing details of ceremonies in which Richard thinks he was forced to participate when younger, brings about something miraculous. Quite how much of what follows is the result of genuine magick or the mental state of two deeply traumatised people is never made clear; but Richard and Juliette find a way to heal their wounds and celebrate the cycle of existence.
It's a bold move for Kokotajlo to venture down the road of f*lk horror, and his movie can't help conjure up (no pun intended) memories of Ben Wheatley's In the Earth from 2021, Mark Jenkin's 2022 movie Enys Men, and also 1970s genre TV, specifically the 'Baby' episode from Nigel Kneale's Beasts TV plays all the way back in 1976. And indeed so familiar are the cultural signposts here - woodcuts, scenes of rural desolation, scratchy soundtrack (from Matthew Herbert) - that the film threatens to become overfamiliar very quickly. But it's saved from that fate by superb performances from Smith and Clark as the couple who lose everything but learn to recover their love, and the sheer level of care lavished by the director in creating a hermetically sealed world which may increasingly seem unhinged but remains totally plausible to those involved. It's a haunting little bit of cinema and I liked it a lot.
Four hapless twenty somethings - and for a change not a faux American accent between them, as is usual with these things - sign up to be human guinea pigs in a flu cure test. They are invited to the home/laboratory of Dr Holger Feldman (Richard Kovacs, whose insane performance not so much chews the scenery as devours it). The doc is cagey about the experiments; and rightly so. He's actually been breeding a 'Dracula fly', an insect so old it was responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs; it also may hold the cure for the disease which killed his wife and has now infected his son.
It's not long before the unsuspecting twenty somethings are having to battle swarms of CGI flies - make that murderous CGI flies - and the ever enlarging queen of the swarm gets to do battle with the Doc, who's slowly turning into a fly himself.
This is about as good as it sounds, but Gregory's creature feature is a little gorier than usual, so even if you're struggling to make sense of what you're watching, you can at least enjoy some reasonably well mounted splattery set pieces. But overall, Mr Gregory, I'm afraid your flies are undone.
A shifty bloke called Harvey (Derek Nelson) wants to get hold of the Jack in the Box, so he sends Raven (Isabella Colby Browne), only survivor of a previous and ill starred recovery expedition, to go in and retrieve it. She's been chosen in part for her survival skills, but also that the estate, Rosewood Manor, where the JitB is hidden, has now been converted into an all girl's school; and Raven is all girl.
So for most of the movie we have Raven interacting with a bunch of bitchy classmates, while dealing with the school's hard as nails head honcho Principal Hinch (Lisa Antrobus); Hinch's best line, when describing conditions in her place of education, is to encourage her pupils not to think of the school as a prison because “in prison you’re allowed visitors”.
For those unfamiliar with the previous JitB films, when the Jack - the powerful demon whose full name is Jackestamara - is released from his box he must claim six victims, after which he grants the person who released him a wish. We learn a lot of this from a book found at the school, hand drawn but not proof read (a section is titled 'Encarceration of the Demon'). Things improve slightly when the Jack is released from his prison, but not that much; like all franchises, their success lives and dies by the ability to bring something new to a formula we've seen a few times before, and sadly there's nothing here to grab the attention.
I do like it that these are productions of Fowler Media which seems to be the whole Fowler family employed in various duties; hats off to them, there aren't many families who could manage that. But come on, if you're going to go to the effort of adding to the canon of the independent British horror film, please have a good script, fleshed out characters and, oh yeah; pacing.
Willow experiences the dysfunctional operation of the household through young innocent eyes, struggling to understand why her mother is protective of Noah but at the same time keen to escape, particularly around the time of the full moon; Waylon meanwhile remains barely tolerant of Noah's behaviour. Things continue in this way until an intervention from Willow's father provides the details of his family history and brings matters to a fiery conclusion.
Ultimately little is what it seems in The Beast Within, and there's a fairytale quality to the film which renders the events somewhat dreamlike and oblique. 'There are two wolves inside of us...they are always at war' states the proverb at the movie's beginning, setting out its metaphoric take on the traditional werewolf story. In the final analysis, despite some solid acting (particularly from Springall as the child whose eyes provide the window to the sights onscreen), Farrell's movie is more impressive visually than narratively; relationships between family members remain muddy and unresolved, and the film's USP - the conflation of lycanthropy with the unpredictability of a violent man within the household, becomes overlaboured.
The Beast Within is released on digital platforms from 19 August.
The genesis of the oddly named Ouija Castle (ok there's a Ouija board and a sort of castle in the movie but huh?) is the story of Sleeping Beaty, but that's just the jumping off point for some very dark shenanigans.
Princess Thalia, whose claim to royalty has failed following the death of her father, is a pure soul in love with the dashing Prince Edison. But Edison's mother, Queen Primrose, cannot agree to the match and would prefer her son to marry Sofia, who has better prospects; Sofia's mother Velma, a particularly odious person desperate for power, has a ouija board seemingly made out of human skin, which when played conjures a demon, Zazid, who does her bidding.
Velma, keen for her daughter to marry, thus securing her own future, causes Thalia to prick herself with a strong sleeping potion that keeps her out of the way, while also impregnating her courtesy of the awful family doctor, Leland. But the sleeping potion doesn't last, and eight months after it was administered, Thalia regains consciousness, finds out that Primrose has been murdered, and plans her revenge against the whole bally lot of them.
Like Cinderella's Curse, this film shows a considerable step up in Warren's filmmaking and, like its companion movie, also increases the bloodletting and overall carnage. Ouija Castle features baby boiling, a scalping, a face being ripped off, and various other grisly touches; concluding with, as does CC, a bloody party/revenge finale (both films sharing the same location, south London's Rivoli Ballroom). At over 90 minutes there are moments where the movie drags a little, but Ouija Castle revels in its nastiness and high body count. Warren is getting better and better at this.
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