Spooky doings in the countryside
Writer-director William McGregor’s debut feature, “Gwen,” has the eerie quiet and grim portent of a supernatural horror story, but it’s a genre film more in form than content and has more in common with Ingmar Bergman’s historical dramas of the 1960s, where elliptical narratives and spiritual despair rendered everything kind of spooky.
Eleanor WorthingtonCox plays the title character: a mid-19th century Welsh farmer’s daughter. With her father away — perhaps forever — and her mother increasingly erratic, it’s left to Gwen to investigate what natural or unnatural force has been destroying local crops and killing neighbors.
McGregor has a good command of horror’s visual and sonic cues. He frequently shatters the movie’s persistent silence with terrifying jolts while teasing out the mystery of what’s been happening around Gwen’s family. Where did her dad go? Why do so many villagers eye them suspiciously?
The tension in “Gwen,” which becomes more effective as the story plays out, is ultimately tied to down-toearth concerns. In a way, this is a movie about what happens when a young person’s faith gets shaken, as the heroine begins to doubt her mom has what it takes to lead her out of hard times.
It’s also about social change and the possibility that what Gwen’s family is facing isn’t a disease or a demon but the end of agrarian life. The real monster here could be something scarier than ghosts — the Industrial Revolution, devouring all.
“Gwen.” Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes Playing: Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; available Friday on VOD.