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?

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