STARVE ACRE : a novel by Andrew Michael Hurley (First published by Dead Ink Books, 2019), a film by Daniel Kokotajlo (UK, 2024)
“What you go searching for and what you find aren’t always the same”
When you look for hope you can find horror or, in the case of Starve Acre, Folk Horror.
This term was first coined by The League of Gentleman’s Mark Gatiss and this flourishing subgenre is currently undergoing a major cinematic revival.
The film version of Andrew Michael Hurley’s sinister novella will add to the popularity of this moniker which is as uniquely British as Hammer Horror was in the 1960s. It will also encourage the belief that darkness lingers below of surface of the apparently idyllic British countryside just as surely as Lynchian nightmares lurk behind white picket fences of middle America.
Andrew Michael Hurley’s distinctive third novel is a book about grief and a couple trying to overcome a personal trauma. The catalyst is that Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s 5 year old son, Ewan, has died suddenly in mysterious circumstances.
This tragic event occurs after the married couple’s move from the city (Leeds) to a house in the Yorkshire Dales inherited from Richard’s recently deceased parents. The new home is described as having three storeys of heavy stone, shuttered windows and a “utilitarian black” front door.
Heavy, shuttered and black? What could possible go wrong?
The local villagers are also far from welcoming. Even though this was his childhood home, Richard thinks “it was hard not to think of himself as an intruder here.”
The fear of outsiders by a close-knit community evokes one of Folk Horror’s recurring tropes as is the notion that the past holds dark secrets. In this place “judgements about people tended to become fixed in the village for considerable lengths of time.”
The ostracization of the Willoughby is worsened when Ewan’s behaviour seems to be that of a child possessed of evil spirits.
Grief isn’t an illness but it becomes a curse. The mother is guilt ridden and convinced that she invited death into the home. Juliette seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists.
Meanwhile, Richard, a university lecturer in history, throws himself into a series of coffin-sized archaeological digs as part of his coping mechanism. His discovery of the skeleton of a hare is the catalyst for a bizarre series of events which, to avoid spoilers, need to read in the novel or seen in the film. Suffice to say that associations with the occult are unearthed.
The hare is an animal that frequently appears in British folklore. The list of the names for the animal in English, taken from a 13th Century Shropshire poem, include that of “the lurker in ditches” and “filthy beast.” Although they are also linked with springtime fertility and renewal, hares are one of England’s taboo animals. The creature is associated with the supernatural and legend has it that witches would transform themselves in to these spring-heeled jackrabbits.
Another source of the mythical mischief in Starve Acre is Jack Grey, an unseen ‘wood sprite’ who is likened to infamous folkloric figures like the Green Man, Robin Goodfellow or Hag o’ the Hay. Despite these allusions to sinister creatures and strange beings, much of the blood magic in the novel is suggested with the rest left to the reader’s imagination.
Daniel Kokotajlo’s film is a far less restrained affair. The writer and director’s addiction of a disturbing and violently bloodthirsty coda adds major occultist dimensions to the story. The focus of the on screen narrative is also very different.
In the novel, the son is ever present before and after his untimely demise but the film not only changes his name from Ewan to Owen but also makes him more of a marginal figure; a trigger for parental pain rather than an all-encompassing symbol of loss.
In contrast, the brooding presence of Richard (Matt Smith) takes on a slightly more prominent role than Juliette (Morfydd Clark) and the film adds details of his troubled childhood that are only vaguely alluded to in the source material.
Richard, the grieving dad, slumps around like an overgrown teenager for whom every day is a bad hair day. The dynamic of Smith’s floppy locks are as constant a source of distraction as the immobile fluffy dog Corey, the pampered pet of Juliette’s sister, Harrie (Erin Richards).
Much of film’s bloody denouement is presaged by the poem that appears at the start of the film , ‘The Dandelion’, ascribed to Richard’s deranged father Neil. It includes ominous references to the “cold abyss” of “nature’s womb”.
The tentative digs of Richard in the book becomes a major excavation by the end of the movie and the opening up of a pagan entry to the spirit world is destined to end in blood and tears.
“This is fucking weird” says Harrie perceptively when she uncovers the dark history of Starve Acre in Neil Willoughby’s archives.
The film’s finale is shamelessly over the top and, when an eerie calm finally descends on a newly reconciled husband and wife, the hare is the happiest of all.
