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The following contains spoilers for Starve Acre, now playing in select theaters and is available for digital purchase

Starve Acre is a chilling horror movie that hits harder for new parents, preying on universal fears. The film blends supernatural elements with parental grief, highlighting the horror of losing a child. Starve Acre's ending showcases the terrifying lengths parents may go to, leaving a haunting impact.

Starve Acre is a very good horror movie on its own merits, but it's especially terrifying new parents like me. As a movie fan who became a father last July, I've been steadily seeing films in entirely new lights. This is probably most pronounced with the horror genre, which has a history of subverting the classical family structure in their storytelling. One of the best recent examples of how more impactful some horror movies hit me now that I'm a Dad is Starve Acre,...

A mere few years ago, the notion that a subgenre as strange and specific as folk horror becoming overexposed seemed unlikely. But with the one-two punch of Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2016) and Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) – films that brought more modern concerns surrounding gender dynamics and romantic/familial relationships into the genre – and the work and dedication of film scholar Kier-La Janisse (whose 2021 documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror might well be the final word on the subject), stories of pagan cult sacrifice and shape-shifting bog witches have become practically mainstream in a world as technologically detached from its primeval roots as its ever been. Enter Starve Acre, an adaptation of the book by Andrew Michael Hurley which started as a bogus “lost novel” supposedly written in 1972 and originally published by Dead Ink Books attributed to a “Jonathan Buckley.” Hurley himself has been a force...

Even without having read Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel, I can almost say with certainty that Daniel Kokotajlo’s film aligns its thematic course with that of the book. That’s why there’s so little on-the-nose elucidation about the mythology that ensnares the family in Starve Acre. And giving us so much to read between the lines and the imagery is what adds to the anxiety Kokotajlo’s film wants us to feel about the uncertainty of, well, everything.

Spoiler Alert

What happens in the film?

Something must’ve happened with Owen for Richard and Juliette to have given Yorkshire country life a chance. It’s never just about the fresh air and the open expanses, is it? But Starve Acre is reluctant to inspect the reason behind the move. And we’re actually two years into Richard and Juliette’s life at Starve Acre, the estate and the...

Despite the whirlwind tragedy of its opening act, Starve Acre is not rushing to get anywhere. With his second feature, writer-director Daniel Kokotajlo wants us to breathe in as much of Starve Acre’s rancid air as our lungs can tolerate. Capturing the English countryside’s ethereal black magic with patience and awe,...

Writer/Director Daniel Kokotajlo adheres to classic folk horror convention with Starve Acre, based on the book by Andrew Michael Hurly. It’s not just the 1970s rural setting or spiritual locals that call to mind foundational films like The Wicker Man but the methodical unfurling of its folklore and escalating horror. It makes for a stunning throwback feature grounded by two compelling leads but one too narratively and thematically sparse to make much of an impact.

Starve Acre introduces Richard, an archeologist who’s recently moved his wife Juliette and son Owen (Arthur Shaw) to his childhood home in the bucolic British countryside for work. Juliette, unaware that Richard’s memories of the home aren’t happy ones, feels that the move will be good for young Owen. Never mind that Richard spends most of his waking hours obsessing over his late father’s artifacts and collections, all related...

You can smell what’s happening in “Starve Acre” before you puzzle the rest of it out. The grassy, peaty dampness of its rural Yorkshire setting seems to hit the olfactory glands without any scratch-and-sniff assistance, only intensifying as the film unearths its literally deep-buried secrets. Daniel Kokotajlo’s impressive second feature unfolds in a vein of British folk horror that has been popular of late — with films from Ben Wheatley’s “A Field in England” to Mark Jenkins’s “Enys Men” all tapping into that retro “Wicker Man” eeriness — but rarely with such rattling sensory specificity or formal refinement. Starring Morfydd Clark and Matt Smith as former townies unprepared for the full burden of lore they inherit with their desolate farmhouse, it’s a tale of quite outlandish fantastical leaps, grounded by the chills it also finds in common weather and wildlife.

Premiering in the main competition at this year’s London Film Festival,...

With great success comes great expectation, and I doubt that Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre will quite live up to the favorable notices of his first feature, the BAFTA-nominated Apostasy. The story, which has been adapted from a novel by Andrew Michael Hurley, concerns Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette Willoughby (Morfydd Clark), who have recently moved from the city to the comparatively desolate Yorkshire Dales. At the village fair, their son Owen, who has complained of hearing the voice and whistles of a sprite named Jack Grey, blinds a horse with a sharp stick and is duly sent to a psychiatric hospital. Shortly after his consultation, which includes a nightmarish brain scan, he dies suddenly at the family home, paralyzing Richard and Juliette and further enlivening the spirit that so tormented him.

It is here the film takes its boldest, most bewildering turn. After Owen’s death, Richard commits himself...

In the most recent episode of Jack Black’s YouTube series, JablinskiGames, Black hit the road in Nashville with Kyle Glass and the rest of the Tenacious D crew. They ended up stopping by the famous Third Man Records where musician Jack White gave them a tour of the studio. They then ended up at Jack White’s house to record a song as Jack Grey.

Black wasn’t able to film the visit, but he did say that it was a “legendary collab”. Black also said that White’s house is as awesome as you’d expect. “His house is crazy, I’ve never seen so many cool antique toys. It’s what you would expect: Jack White’s house is gonna be off the chain. I’m still floating, floating on Cloud 9. I think our song is the kickin’ chicken too — it’s a stone-cold jam.”

Enjoy the video below.