★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Chris Cronin
Combining folk horror with a chilling series of child murders based on actual crimes, director Chris Cronin’s debut feature The Moor makes for a truly unsettling experience.
The Moor (U.K., 2023), one of the more original approaches to folk horror cinema in recent memory is a slow burner. Running just slightly more than two hours long may sometimes test the patience of some viewers, but those who give in to the eerie aura of Chris Cronin’s debut directorial feature should find themselves transfixed and rewarded.
When Claire was a child (Billie Suggett), she sent her younger friend Danny (Dexter Sol Ansell) into a shop to provide a distraction, posing as a little boy looking for his father while she shoplifted candy. Danny never came to their meeting place around the corner, and when Claire enquired about Danny to the shopkeeper, he told her the boy’s father had taken him away. This incident was one of many child disappearances at the time. Years later, Danny’s father, Bill (David Edward-Robertson), implores adult Claire (Sophia La Porta) to help him recover Danny’s remains from the moors where a serial killer (reminiscent of Ian Brady) dumped his young victim’s bodies by way of her true-crime podcast.
Bill’s methods are highly unusual, getting advice from dowser Alex (Mark Peachey) regarding possible whereabouts, which Bill and moorland ranger Liz (Vicki Hackett) search. Eventually, Alex’s psychic daughter Eleanor (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips) joins the group, adding to the strangeness of the proceedings, as if the standing stones, peat bogs, and general haunting landscape of the moors themselves were not goosebumps-inducing enough.
A gripping exploration of grief and guilt, The Moor, written by Paul Thomas and featuring memorable performances from all involved, gets under the skin as it examines the fractured psyches of both Claire and Bill, leading to a climax guaranteed to send shivers down the spines of even the most seasoned of supernatural-horror aficionados.
Review by Joseph Perry
The Moor, from Bulldog Film Distribution, premiered in UK Cinemas from 14th June and will be available on Digital HD from 1st July, 2024.
