Down the Rabbit Hole: Writer/Director Daniel Kokotajlo Talks ‘Starve Acre’
by CHAD KENNERK
Matt Smith in Starve Acre.
Photo by Chris Harris, Courtesy of Brainstorm Media.
Starve Acre is a gothic folktale for the modern age. Based on the novel and novella of the same name by author Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre concerns Richard and Juliette (Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark), a couple who find themselves facing the unthinkable. When their son Owen begins exhibiting strange behaviour, the pair move to Richard’s countryside childhood home in the hope of a fresh start. As dark forces encroach, the family finds themselves engulfed in a land marked by a hellish history.
Told among the chilling northern landscapes and shot across Yorkshire, the eerie entry marks the second feature from writer/director Daniel Kokotajlo — who previously earned a 2019 Bafta nomination for Apostasy. Kokotajlo’s ode to 70s British folk-horror held its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2023 and now arrives in theaters from Brainstorm Media (US) and BFI Distribution (UK). Film Review and writer/director Daniel Kokotajlo discuss the psychology of horror and how the genre opens a door to dissecting complex issues.
In conversation with writer/director Daniel Kokotajlo.
Film Review (FR): Andrew’s story originally appeared in a much shorter version from Dead Ink Books before becoming a 300-page novel. How did you find this story? Or did this story find you?
Daniel Kokotajlo (DK): A little bit of both. I was already aware of Andrew’s work. I’d read his earlier stuff, The Loney and Devil’s Day. I was a big fan of it. I started talking to producer Tessa Ross and she mentioned this book before it came out. I got ahold of the promo copy; read it and loved it. I also became aware of his earlier version of it, I think that's the one you're referring to, when he released it under a pseudonym. I read that as well. That first version, under the pseudonym, had a lot more gore to it, with more typical horror beats and a different ending. I think in the end, the version that I developed was a combination of the two versions of the novel.
(FR): The Yorkshire countryside is a character in itself and an important one. How does the darker, often hostile, northern landscape influence and perhaps even define these events?
(DK): I think that landscapes are a big part of all of Andrew’s work. And it's a big part of my earlier work – this kind of fascination with landscapes and what they represent. For me, it's always about childhood; going back home or somewhere that you've tried to escape from. It's a place full of superstitions. I don't know why I feel like that, maybe it's something to do with my upbringing. There’s this sense of failure or disappointment somehow if you end up going back there. I think for me, that's where it comes from —the darkness of the landscape and returning home. For Andrew, I'm not quite sure. We both share this interest in the northern landscapes, because it does have that quality where you could just be walking over the Moors and the sun's out and it's glorious. Just like that, it can switch and you get hit with a snowstorm or 50-mile-an-hour sleet. It feels like you're staring into the abyss and it can just change like that on you. I think that's part of it. Starve Acre — it’s really got this crazy quality to the use of weather and the landscape.
(FR): In our age, there is often a desire for a more traditional lifestyle or to commune with nature, which can sometimes be idealised. How does the film delve into that idea of returning to your roots – in more ways than one?
(DK): I think you're right; that's what we're playing with. There's this nostalgic feeling that a lot of people feel at the moment, where they want to go back or return to the ways of old and they put on these rose-tinted glasses. But that's not the case, is it? When you start to look into the past, it’s dark and strange, and it doesn't give you that kind of comfort you were hoping for. That’s what it’s all about.
(FR): How did you approach taking gothic ideas and placing them into a modern setting with 70s British folk horror influences?
(DK): Well, a lot of it was already in the book. It was about finding a way to visualise a lot of that. I spoke to Andrew at the beginning of the process, and we talked a lot about films that inspired us. We had a lot of that stuff in common. Lots of old Nigel Kneale TV films, classic 70s folk horrors as well. It was looking back at them and just borrowing from that in an unashamed way. That's what I loved about the story; that it was like an ode to these older, typically British, stories. We tried not to overthink it or overcomplicate it or wash it down or anything. These are the kinds of things that they would do back then. It's not in your face either. Those stories back then were a little unidentifiable. They were strange and a little uncanny; more of a creeper really than a full-on horror.
(FR): The effects of grief can feel like a kind of madness. What makes horror such a good genre to explore psychology and family dynamics?
(DK): It gives you the opportunity to do that. It's so hard these days to make a film. If it is a hard subject like grief, and if you try to do that in the drama space, it's very difficult to get anything off the ground. In one way, horror lets you do that. And the audience is there for it, which is fantastic. People are willing to deal with these stories and to examine them in that way. So it just gives you that platform to deal with it. That’s what’s kind of ironic about it as well — you can deal with very important, but difficult, subjects through horror by using this kind of entertaining genre. Grief, again, is a big preoccupation of mine. My first film, Apostasy, in the end was about grief as well. I'm kind of preoccupied with that.
(FR): The hare takes on different meanings for different characters. The animatronic and creature effects really help ground the film in something tangible. What was that development process like?
(DK): As soon as I finished reading the story, I instantly thought of Alice, the Jan Švankmajer stopmotion film, because that creeped the hell out of me when I was a kid. I’ll never forget those images burned into my memory, more so than Watership Down in fact. There was just something about that crazy taxidermy rabbit that was going around. I'd have loved to do it that way, but stopmotion was impossible really, for the schedule we were on. But also, I love animatronics in films and I'm a sucker for Jim Henson stuff, The Dark Crystal, and got really excited by that and [about] working with puppeteers. We had seven puppeteers, I think, working on the hare and just trying to keep it as realistic as possible. That was the brief for the model making and for the animation: let's not exaggerate it, let's not make it too cartoony, let's try and keep it as real as possible. People aren't necessarily aware of the characteristics or the physicality of the brown hare either, they’re quite ominous creatures. They’re lanky and gaunt, they have these big, bulging eyes and they’re quite mysterious creatures. So it was about just trying to portray that as well in the animatronics.
(FR): You had a group of puppeteers in pretty small spaces as you were trying to get your shots. What was that process like in filming?
(DK): Yeah, it was tricky, because it was on location in a small house. The rooms were just these sort of box bedrooms and it got very cosy because you had a whole crew in there of maybe 15-20 people, then you had seven puppeteers as well — contorted in different positions and all in blue suits. It took a long time. When I watch the film now, I get triggered by it, because it's like, “Man, each shot’s like just a few seconds long, but it took so long to set up and to light properly.” When you’ve got a puppeteer hanging off the ceiling, just using one hand, it's very difficult to get the sort of movements right as well. You just keep going, take after take. Eventually you get there, but you end up sacrificing other things to get those shots right. It all had to be planned out and storyboarded and discussed beforehand.
(FR): I would imagine there were a lot of challenges with this project, because you not only had the animatronic, but animals, a child actor, and the changing elements outside. There was a lot at play.
(DK): It was a very difficult shoot, yeah [laughs.] I think I was working on the script during the first lockdown and then the second lockdown. Because I was trapped indoors, part of me was like, “I’d just love to get out there and do everything at the same time.” I wrote even more animals into the story and I just wanted to do it all [laughs.] So that was part of it. I learned that that was possibly a mistake as well, because we had lots of animals and children and the weather was always against us. There were problems where the crew would not turn up [because they] were in the wrong location. I had five or six exterior scenes set up and then the day before we lost the location, so it felt like a cursed production. We got there. It was a bit of a miracle in the end that we put a film together.
(FR): It’s something of a miracle that any film gets made. Then to have all those challenges on top of that. Do you just have to laugh at a certain point?
(DK): Yeah, that was it. I think we were close to hysteria. It brought us all together. We all just started turning up and laughing for no reason, because everything was going wrong and it just became kind of fun because of that as well. There's a point where you get so stressed out that you can't get any more stressed. So it's just, “Yeah, let's have fun while we’re doing it.” It all adds to the mood I think, and the quality of the film. The kind of craziness of what was going on suits it, because it is a weird, uncanny film. It was sort of right that that stuff was happening in a way.
(FR): What’s your own experience with horror? What were some of your early or foundational memories with the genre?
(DK): Horror was my first love, really. I grew up in quite a religious family. It was out of bounds — horror. So it was a seriously guilty pleasure, to the point where I would become riddled with guilt and purge myself and give away all my VHSes and then get them back a month later. I went around in this kind of cycle of loving and hating horror. I remember loving Razorback when I was eight or nine years old and thinking that it was the best film ever made. That's still dear to my heart, Razorback, more so for the music these days than the storytelling. Like I said, things like Alice and Watership Down. They made a strong impression on me when I was a kid. As you grow up, you get into all the things like The Wicker Man and The Blood on Satan's Claw. I really got into British creepers, as well, as I got older. Lots of Nigel Kneale and M. R. James adaptations.
DANIEL KOKOTAJLO’s first feature Apostasy — about a young mother’s struggle to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses — was nominated for a string of awards, including 6 BIFAS, and a Bafta for Outstanding Debut Film, and won the London Film Festival IWC Bursary for Outstanding First Feature in 2019. Apostasy was made on the micro-budget scheme for IFeatures, and was subsequently released by Artificial Eye, where it went on to gross $500,000 at the UK box office and was bought by Amazon for the US. Daniel is developing several original projects in the UK, including an original TV pilot titled Anointed (about the love story between a Muslim boy and Jehovah’s Witness) which was sold in a bidding war to Jane Featherstone / Sister Pictures. He has been selected as both a Screen Star of Tomorrow and by Bafta as a Breakthrough Brit.
Starve Acre is available from Brainstorm Media 26 July.
