MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
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Film round-up: September 6, 2024
Yorkshire chills, tangled in the dark web, pregnancy diaries and brackish juice: MARIA DUARTE reviews Starve Acre, Red Rooms, My First Film and Beetlejuice
(L) Juliette Gariepy in Red Rooms; (R) Morfydd Clark in Starve Acre
[IMDb]
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
Starve Acre (15)
Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo
★★★
SET in 1970s rural England this chilling gothic horror revenge fantasy about the crippling effects of grief is writer-director Daniel Kokotajlo’s follow-up to his award-winning debut Apostasy.
Adapted from the novella by Andrew Michael Hurley, it centres on Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette (Morfydd Clark) who relocate to their remote family home, Starve Acre, in Yorkshire when their son Owen (Arthur Shaw) starts acting oddly and upends their idyllic life, throwing it into turmoil.
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