While I’d like to think that I’m cool with my cinematic heroes attempting to try new things other than the genre that first brought them to my attention, I have to admit I do get a little antsy when one of them takes the chance to stretch their wings. Would I give John Carpenter the same grace if, after a string of dark, anti-hero led titles, he suddenly headed off to make a rom-com; or Sam Raimi if he decided to chance his arm at a court room drama with a locked down camera? Let’s put it this way, I’ve seen Wes Craven’s abysmal Hills Have Eyes 2 more than once, but to my shame I’ve never seen Music Of The Heart… And yet, I do truly want these guys to do what makes them happy, even if that means that The Raid’s Gareth Evans gets to go out and make a movie that contains absolutely no martial arts whatsoever.
That’s right, even for a horror fan such as myself, the news that Evans first film after the Raid franchise wouldn’t be some urban kick-fest rocked my confidence a bit. I mean, his co-directed segment in V/H/S/2 is still the installment to beat – but folk horror? Wasn’t that a little slow for a man of Evans’ talents?
The year is 1905 and disgraced drug addict Thomas Richardson travels to a remote Welsh island in order to perform a desperate rescue attempt. While the ravaged Thomas has become estranged from an addled father who no longer recognises his existence, he has never given up on his pure hearted sister, Jennifer, and after her kidnapping, he has volunteered to take the ransom to the cult that has taken her.
When he arrives, he finds that an entire community has been built off of the beliefs of three ex-convicts; the leader and head of this new religion, Malcolm Howe and his two partners, Frank and Quinn. It’s claimed that object of their worship is a pagan Goddess of the Earth who the trio allegedly captured, enslaved and made animal sacrifices to in order to keep the land fertile, but as of late, the Goddess’ power has been waning due to the lack of resources needed to sustain her – hence the ransom demand.
Managing to avoid detection and posing as a new convert, Thomas pressures young, simple lad, Jeremy, to aid him and he’ll keep his secret affair with Quinn’s daughter a secret, but the deeper the faithless man probes into the workings of this cult, the more he finds that the preachings of Malcolm Howe are not mere religious hyperbole. Soon, the addict is up to his steely blue eyeballs in Earth Gods, archaic implements of torture and a fucked up dude in a vine helmet who is known as The Grinder – but as Thomas gets ever closer to finding his sister, the balance of power on the island is about to change with gruesome results.
With his sister’s life on the line and an elder being in dire need of some care in the community, can Thomas find the strength, both psychically and spiritually, to untangle the vines of deity abuse?
In response to my own, immature bleatings at the top of my review, I should probably say that I’m also incredibly happy when I’m proven wrong. John Carpenter’s Starman has legitimate heart, Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan is spellbinding and Gareth Edwards’ Apostle is an impressively fucked up change of pace, even for someone desperate to see him film Iko Uwais snap someone’s limb like a fleshy breadstick. Of course, Evans has already tried his hand at extravagantly expanding his craft before with the far larger crime canvas of The Raid II stepping outside the restrained, single day, single location insanity of the first film and his V/H/S already cast a blood-streaked look over fucked up cults, however, Evans is adamant that slowing his usually frenetic style is the way to go and you can fault the man’s wisdom.
As a result, we get a richly textured period piece that oddly works even better if your audience is fully aware of the director’s action credentials as the fact that Evans is noticably holding back proves to add to the already building dread and tension as you wait to see how, when and if the filmmaker is going to break and deploy some of his notorious brutality. Bur until then, he’s got his eye locked on creating a grim world of folk horror that takes the basic cues of The Wicker Man (Edward Woodward of course, not Nic Cage) and infuses them with the type of horrors usually found within a Clive Barker Books Of Blood story that also impressively doubles down in emphatically proving that the Welsh can be evil. The production values are lush as hell, with all the buildings built by the denizens of the island carrying a dark and vaguely slimy feel at the wood has been cannibalised by boats. Also, the time period also provides a similar and fascinating collision of styles not unlike the ones seen in The Wild Bunch which mixed the classic western with turn of the centry trinkets such as automatic pistols and cars. Here, the isolated nature of the island gives everything a puritanical feel right out of a Robert Eggers film, but among the thick blouses and grotesque torture implements, we also have shotguns being waved around which gives everything a bizarre, displaced feel, like time and reality has hiccuped due to all the crazy shit that’s going on.
Further adding to his rather eclectic resume by playing another man with a messed-up past, Dan Stevens provides sufficient intensity as a lead who not only has a hefty Laudanum habit, but has a scarred body that hints at a faith-sapping event in his past. He’s joined by by Michael Sheen’s near-sentient Welsh accent as the front man of this entire cult who treads an interesting line between a man trapped between doing heinous things for the good of his community and knowing which lines he should and shouldn’t be crossed. Props should also be given to Mark Lewis Jones’ Quinn, a member of the original founders who, when it comes to the crunch, turns out he doesn’t share his colleague’s lingering shreds of humanity with truly gruesome consequences.
It’s here that we put aside all the threads of man subverting religion, gods being held hostage (metaphorically and literally) by their followers and metaphors about how we’re kicking the living shit out of mother Earth – all relevant by the way – and focus on what happens once Evans drops the dread and gives us the horror. Some may find this aspect of the film rather random and uneven as if Evans is just casually throwing in arbitrary horror images to build up the scares, but personally I found the haphazard nature of their actually having a supernatural presence in the film gave it a ragged unpredictability that made it feel like a throwback to anything-goes, 80s horror literature. Of course, when the blood is eventually spilt, Evans predictably doesn’t hold back, providing a people grinding machine, a spectacular gutting and a showshopping brain boring device that works hard to keep you uncomfortably shuffling in your seat.
Brutal, mean and dripping with dread, not all of Apostle may be worship-worthy (why exactly does a cult struggling to restrain themselves from commiting human sacrifices have a brain-boring torture table just sitting in storage?), but as a genre shift for it’s director, it proves to be a smart choice for Netflix to aquire more horror movies from directors with original voices. Yes, those itching for Evans to return to a world of blunt force trauma may feel a little underserved, but it’s a small price to pay for one of cinema’s most exciting talents to stretch his reach.
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