Starve Acre

"Kokotajlo crafts a moody, somber, and extremely stylish piece of folk horror. But the filmmaker is too beholden to folk horror classics and vague storytelling that it creates an emotional distance. It’s ultimately too restrained and too sparse to linger in memory (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 5)" 

"A preposterous folk horror tale" 

"At times, it’s scary how derivative it is. Still, as crepuscular weirdness seeps across the story and leads to a delirious ending, it’s largely effective" 

"Daniel Kokotajlo‘s impressive second feature unfolds in a vein of British folk horror that has been popular of late (...) but rarely with such rattling sensory specificity or formal refinement" 

"[It] doesn’t surprise us, or ever truly defy the tropes of the genre, but it’s a well-made and -acted venture dishing up a few earthy chills" 

"Folk horror is a consistently popular genre with good reason, and Starve Acre makes excellent use of some of its most reliable tropes." 

"The film stumbles storytelling-wise by leaning too heavily into supernatural elements (...) Morfydd Clark and Matt Smith deliver strong performances, but the characters lack depth and emotional development"