Blood Harvest (Canada 2020: Dir Thomas Robert Lee)

Blood Harvest sets its stall out by way of a pre credit crawl: in 1873 a group of families branched out from the Church of Ireland and set up shop in an isolated forest area in North America, eschewing all scientific progress. In 1956 an eclipse presaged a pestilence which spread throughout the community, killing both crops and livestock: only one homestead remained immune, owned by Agatha Earnshaw (Catherine A Dark Song Walker). Earnshaw has remained relatively prosperous, much to the annoyance of the local townsfolk, from whom she is several miles removed. And there's a reason for her continued isolation; she has a daughter, Audrey (Jessica Reynolds), who no-one knows about; Audrey is kept out of sight and hidden in a box loaded on to her wagon, when Agatha needs to go to town.

As the film opens, it's 1973 (and it's quite an M. Night Shyamalan touch to see a village dressed in the clothes of two centuries previously, knowing that elsewhere the Vietnam war rages and there's a crook in the White House); Audrey is 17, growing in independence and becoming tired of being kept out of sight, for example when a local man, Lochlan Bell (Tom Carey) comes to the farm to (unsuccessfully) barter for goods. Later, while guiding her cart through town, Agatha is confronted by angry villagers who have gathered for a funeral. Audrey, in her box, witnesses the confrontation and her mother being struck by one man, Colm Dwyer (Jared Abrahamson) who with his wife Bridget (Hannah Emily Anderson) have just buried their baby boy Liam. But worse is to come; when Audrey is briefly let out of the box she is seen by one of the villagers, Bernard Buckley (Don McKellar); although, in return for the donation of produce by Agatha, he promises not to tell, both women realise that the secret about Audrey will soon be public knowledge.

Audrey is incensed that Agatha wants no revenge against those who have slighted her, as she can draw on great powers; for Agatha is a witch, and the reason for her prosperity - as the villagers gradually starve - is entirely down to supernatural reasons. And so Audrey, who also has powers, possibly even stronger than her mother, takes it upon herself to wreak that revenge, slowly contaminating the villagers, turning them against each other, while all the time becoming more confident and subversive.

I'm guessing that the title Blood Harvest was forced on the film to make it more appealing to VODers scrolling through viewing choices; its original titles 'The Ballad of Audrey Earnshaw' and later 'The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw' are perhaps more descriptive of the slowburn lyrical nature of the movie. And Blood Harvest is a considered piece; while it has moments of violence, much is not shown and the audience has to work to join some of the narrative dots. The themes of an isolated religiously ostracised rural community trying to eke out a living surrounded by towering dense forests, and a whiff of witchcraft, both bring to mind Robert Eggers' 2015 film The Witch (although Lee's movie is far more upfront about the uncanny elements).

The sense of a once God fearing community feeling that the same God has abandoned them, and their lack of salvation once Audrey's revenge takes hold, is occasionally very painful to watch, particularly as the 'justice' is unrelenting and sometimes savagely drawn out. Splitting the film into four sections: Incantation; Descent; Fallout; and Spring encases the story in ritual, much as the village farmers have geared their lives, with ever diminishing returns, to the cycle of the seasons. I really liked this movie; full of passionate and impassioned performances, by turn quiet and nuanced and shocking and ugly.

Signature Entertainment presents Blood Harvest on DVD and Digital HD from Monday 16th November

The VVitch (US 2015: Dir Robert Eggers)

It's over a week since I saw The VVitch. I'm usually much quicker at applying finger to keyboard when reviewing films, but lots of things have conspired to prevent this piece appearing before now. So I'm writing this with some week old memories of the movie and a few notes I jotted down at the time, but it doesn't really matter because The VVitch is still firmly imprinted in my mind and probably will be for weeks to come. It's an extraordinary film.

Subtitled A New-England Folktale, the movie is that rare thing, a genuinely gripping slow burner. William and Katherine, two devout Puritans living in America in the early 17th century, are exiled from a community who cannot tolerate their levels of religious fanaticism. Forced into the wilderness to be closer to God, they set up a homestead in the middle of the country at the edge of a large forest and eke out their existence with their five children, often living at near starvation levels. When the youngest child Sam mysteriously goes missing (the initial belief is that the child has been abducted by a wolf but the audience know different) the family, steeped in grief and with their crops failing, gradually turn their suspicions on each other and then to Thomasin, the oldest child, suspecting her of being a witch. Their concerns are misdirected, but the truth is much closer to reality than they think.

If you haven't seen the film yet, it's best not to read on. One of the clever things about The VVitch is how it subverts our accepted understanding of history, which tells us that the witch trials which followed in the US later in the century were about the subjugation of uneducated women by male dominated authority figures rather than anything supernatural. This film defies that understanding by showing us that the things these women were accused of were real. That first time feature director Robert Eggars achieves this without any of it seeming silly is in part due to the script being written using authentic dialogue of the 17th century - the awkward verbosity requires the audience to listen closely but never to be comfortable with what they're hearing. There is some fine acting here too. Ralph Ineson's performance - and his sonorous, portentous voice - makes us easily forget his roles in TV comedies and voice overs for adverts. Kate Dickie as his wife Katherine has less to do but is convincingly distressed (she has one scene, towards the end of the film, that will haunt you for days), and the children, particularly Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, are all very effective.

But it's the visuals that elevate The VVitch above the usual genre fare. The forest that is the backdrop to their homestead - actually filmed in Ontario, Canada - is one of the most frightening uses of exteriors I've seen in a movie, and the sense of isolation and the threat of what might lie in those woods is palpable. The small details of farm life leap from woodcuts of the time and the horror, when it arrives, is very well handled by being glimpsed rather than overtly shown. The final scene, which in most other directors' hands would appear perhaps clumsy and obvious, provides a strange almost optimistic coda to a film which spends most of its time mired in pessimism.

Yes I loved The VVitch. It's slow, sometimes dangerously so, and although critics have generally loved it it's perhaps too niche for commercial success. But in its way this is a Haxan for our times, and I can't give it a bigger compliment than that.