Taken at face value
Cert 15 ★★★ In cinemas now
Can we have our jump scares back please? Like the Oscar-winning Get Out, writer-director Alex Garland’s new film is a so-called “elevated horror” – a chiller that aims to challenge the noggin as well as tingle the spine.
The always excellent Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a troubled young woman who flees to what looks like an idyllic holiday rental to get over the death of her abusive husband, whose final hours are played out in flashbacks.
It’s a gorgeous Elizabethan house in a picture-postcard West Country village. But the Airbnb ad missed out a couple of vital details about the location. The fictional Coston is populated almost entirely by horribly sexist males.
And all of them, even a foul-mouthed schoolboy, have the face of Rory Kinnear.
The first Rory she meets is the house’s owner – a posh rural type in a Barbour jacket whose jokes are as off-colour as his teeth.
The next one is rocking a more natural look. She’s enjoying a country walk when a naked Rory chases her back to the house and tries to force his way through the front door.
Policeman Rory saves the day but isn’t remotely sympathetic.
This chiller aims to challenge the noggin and tingle the spine
Pervy vicar Rory is even worse. There are no big scares but for the most part this is an eerily atmospheric chiller, albeit one saddled with a unsubtle feminist message about toxic masculinity.
But why so many Rorys?
As Harper doesn’t appear to notice that all the locals look like the same British character actor, it can’t all be in her head.
As the tension flagged, my mind wandered away from Garland’s #Metoo messaging and back to Rory’s dad Roy and his late-70s stint on The Dick Emery Show. With all the daft wigs and fake teeth, this could be a tribute to the “you are awful” funnyman.