Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: William Brent Bell
Starring: Tuppence Middleton, Ralph Ineson, Matt Stokoe, Evie
Templeton
American filmmakers Ari Aster and Robert Eggers may have kicked off a
revival of the folk-horror sub-genre, but the cinematic spiritual home
of folk-horror (at least in the western world) is Britain. It may be
directed by an American,
Orphan: First Kill's William Brent Bell, but Lord of Misrule has all
the ingredients for a classic slice of British folk-horror. A small
village filled with sinister yokels? Yep. An outsider who clashes with
the locals' beliefs? Absolutely. Lots of talk of "the old ways?" You
betcha. A missing child and resultant fears of human sacrifice to
appease pagan gods? You better believe it.
Yet despite possessing all the right ingredients,
Lord of Misrule never quite captures the distinctive vibe
of folk-horror. The best British folk-horrors blur the line between
their heroes and villains, between the old pagan ways and modern
Christianity. They're often sympathetic of traditional beliefs and
critical of Christianity while drawing comparisons between the
fundamental nature of both doctrines. With a religious figure at its
centre, Lord of Misrule has the perfect opportunity to
double down on this idea, but it's a concept it squanders.
The key movie of the original folk-horror movement,
The Wicker Man, plunged a devout Christian into a pagan community.
Lord of Misrule goes one step further by making its
protagonist a vicar. Hot priest Rebecca (Tuppence Middleton) is
just settling in after taking over the church of a small English
village. There are tensions with her novelist husband (Matt Stokoe), who can't write anything, leaving Rebecca to pay the bills. The
couple's young daughter, Grace (Evie Templeton) is struggling to
fit in with her new surrounds.
While her Christian faith means she disapproves of the village's
embracing of the pagan tradition of a harvest festival, Rebecca is happy
when Grace is selected to be this year's harvest angel. At the ceremony,
lead by local blowhard Jocelyn (Ralph Ineson, who since his turn
in
The Witch
has become a staple of this stuff), Grace mysteriously disappears, last
seen wandering into the woods accompanied by a man dressed as a
demon.
With the police and her husband both proving useless, Rebecca conducts
her own investigation, which brings her into conflict with Jocelyn. The
townsfolk express sympathy for Rebecca, but there's something a little
disingenuous about their affection. As Rebecca investigates she becomes
increasingly alarmed by how seriously the locals take their adherence to
the old ways.
On paper, Lord of Misrule should work. It shares
essentially the same setup as The Wicker Man after all,
that of a Christian searching for a missing girl among a community of
sinister pagans. But it fails to build a convincingly pagan world beyond
some window dressing. The Wicker Man feels like the
filmmakers literally landed on an island that was still rooted in
paganism, but Lord of Misrule's English village is never anywhere near as convincing. The sense that
we're watching a very modern village play dress-up is abetted by the
film's bland digital aesthetic. Shooting on film, especially the lower
quality film stocks, goes a long way to selling the distinctive ambience
of folk-horror – just look at how much heavy lifting the 16mm film did
for Mark Jenkin's
Enys Men. With its bland visuals and procedural narrative,
Lord of Misrule might be mistaken for the sort of limited
series that you'd find on British TV on a Sunday evening, though likely
with Middleton replaced by Anna Friel or Sarah Lancashire.
That procedural aspect kills off much of the potential for suspense by
keeping both Rebecca and the viewer in the dark. We receive information
at the same time as Rebecca, which means we're never a step ahead of
her, which of course eliminates the possibility of any moments where we
might find ourselves shouting at the screen for her to stay out of the
basement/woods/whatever.
Perhaps Lord of Misrule's biggest misstep is in wasting the potential of both its protagonist
and the talented actress cast in the role. The fact that Rebecca is a
woman of the cloth doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme
of the narrative, and she barely demonstrates any trust in her faith or
crisis thereof. Middleton is one of the most exciting British actresses
to emerge in recent year, yet aside from the Canadian thrillers
Disappearance at Clifton Hill
and
Possessor, she's struggled to find the roles she deserves. Her presence isn't
enough to make anything of Rebecca, who is one of the more confusing
protagonists to grace the horror genre in quite some time. Despite some
runny eye-liner, she never seems quite as upset as a mother should be at
the disappearance of her child, and her reaction to some events
(particularly a physical assault at the hands of an angry local man) is
downright baffling.
If you're new to folk-horror, Lord of Misrule might
provoke some further exploration of the sub-genre. But for those of us
familiar with folk-horror's unique delights, Bell's film is a dull
attempt to ride its coattails without understanding the cloth it's cut
from.
