Find a hobby, nurture a demon hare

On Starve Acre and busybodies

Morfydd Clark as Jules in Starve Acre.

This past weekend was quite a handful. On Friday night, I finally watched Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre. Starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark, this folk horror film tells the story of Richard and Jules, a bereaved couple in 1970s rural Yorkshire who find solace - or something akin to that - in diving into a creepy mythical tale that Richard’s dad was obsessed with. The man journaled about it quite a bit. More atmospheric than action packed, what I appreciated in this film was its stark commitment to non-exposition. While its open-endedness may frustrate many, I was delighted by the film’s resistance to entertaining the viewer. In an age where attention seems to be a currency in itself, Starve Acre remains impressively aloof. Watch it at your peril.

Based on a novel by Andrew Michael Hurley, the film portrays strange happenings. Owen, the couple’s child is possessed or influenced by a spirit called Jack Gray that pushes him to commit violent acts until he becomes the first of three sacrifices necessary to… something. It’s not exactly clear if the deaths are necessary for Jack to gain corporeal form or to unlock what Richard calls “the womb of nature”.

Following Owen’s death, Richard is given leave from work and becomes obsessed with digging up the roots of an ancient oak tree that is also a portal to the spirit world. During one of his digging sessions, he finds a fossilised hare that, of course, is a cursed demon-thing or maybe even sinister Jack himself. Under Richard’s watchful eye, it grows its flesh, skin, and fur back and one day comes back to life. It is at this point that things start to get weird weird. Jules, weighed down by impossible amounts of grief, begins nurturing the hare like she would her own child. Things turn uglier by the minute, with random acts of violence and murders of colleagues and family members.

The film is often unsettling, both in its imagery and in its refusal to cohere. I did not exactly enjoy it and put plainly the concept sounds a bit silly. But I did appreciate the experience overall, and you’ve got to admire Richard and Jules’s resourcefulness: are you feeling depressed? Bored with your quiet life in the countryside? Why not try a new hobby? Yes, pick up your abusive father’s creepy notebooks full of tips on how to awaken a pagan spirit that will take over your whole personality! Cut him some apple slices, why not! To be fair, Richard’s colleagues had advised him to do some research to advance his career.

In all seriousness, however, while I haven’t read the novel, I feel that the film’s silences and stillness are brilliantly worked out. They leave so much room for the viewers to build meaning on their own that it is possible that if you ask five people to give their takes on what the film is actually about you will end up hearing of five different films. That is art. If you enjoyed Midsommar, this might just be up your alley.

On a side note, this has also been a weekend of keen observation of human behaviour and I have, once again, felt a little disappointed if not surprised at the proprietorial stance some people in academia/social media take over a very specific set of authors. It is always rooted on self-importance, but disguised under some kind of selfless claim. It’s not about me, it’s about women’s rights! You don’t really see people elbowing each other to be the sole bearers of nuggets of truth about, say, Margaret Oliphant or Allan Bennett, but then take someone like Virginia Woolf? woof, indeed.

In my experience, Brazilian academia can be quite embarrassing at times in its performances of what constitutes productivity and authority in a way that would one-hundred-per-cent surprise scholars from basically anywhere else (shall we have a chat about made up metrics some other time?). Yet, the kind of provincial rudeness of random people who feel they are qualified to elect themselves the heralds of an author is always a bit shocking. I will write about this at length at some point, but I suppose that because some people crave not only attention, but to be perceived in a certain way, they create these little exclusive clubs, and the funniest thing to me re: Virginia Woolf is that she wrote a whole essay about her unwillingness to join said little clubs. LOL, I guess.

So, you know, if you find yourself bothering too much with that kind of thing, it’s probably time to take up a hobby. Join a dancing class! Bake some cupcakes! Dig up the entrance to the underworld! Nurture a creepy hare!