‘Lord of Misrule’ Film Review: Intensely Chilling Folk Horror

Director William Brent Bell’s beautifully dark “Lord of Misrule” is a disturbing mystery/horror picture that leans in to historical English superstitions and pagan beliefs to create a compelling viewing experience. Bell’s film finds palpable terror in its unsettling atmosphere and in the crippling fear of a mother searching for her missing child.

Along with husband Henry (Matt Stokoe) and young daughter Grace (Evie Templeton), Rebecca Holland (Tuppence Middleton) has recently moved to a small English town, becoming its local vicar. The citizens seem to like her; filling the church every Sunday and always having a kind word to send her way.

Each year, the town holds a traditional harvest festival, where the citizens seem to have fun with the rituals of their past, turning it into a celebration filled with food, drink, and music. At this year’s festival, Grace has been crowned “Harvest Angel”, and almost immediately begins seeing menacing cowled figures with animal head masks standing in the woods near her home. Soon after these figures begin to appear, young Grace starts defaming her bunny rabbit. It is not long until she disappears; led into the woods by one of the cloaked figures.

As the police prove to be no help, Rachel begins to investigate on her own, slowly uncovering the truth of the town’s inhabitants and receiving an eerie warning from the menacing Jocelyn Abney (Ralph Ineson, a mainstay in modern folk horror and owner of one of the best voices in modern cinema). Through his well-written design and Ineson’s chilling performance, it is Abney who becomes the film’s most involving character.

As the hunt for the young girl intensifies, dark secrets regarding the town’s past begin to reveal themselves. With the terror of losing a child bearing down on her, Rebecca must reach deep within and discover what she will sacrifice to save her daughter from a living evil.

Director Bell patiently creates a proper aura through unsettling imagery. Working with cinematographer Simon Rowling, the two create a visual bleakness that is as artful as it is disquieting. Rowling’s camera and lighting stylings cause the deceptively quaint little town to become as menacing as the dark woods that surround it.

As the actual terror begins to reveal itself, Tom de Ville’s carefully constructed screenplay unravels each scene like a puzzle we are too scared to solve. The writer embraces the folklore rituals, never making fun of them. The ceremonies and traditions are well-researched and help to highlight the slowly building horrors on screen.

With its ever-present darkness (both literal and metaphorical), Director Bell doesn’t go for the black humor found in Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic, “The Wicker Man”, but strives to create an almost unbearable foreboding that refuses to release the audience from its grasp. In this sense, Bell’s work finds comparison to Piers Haggard’s terrifying, “The Blood on Satan’s Claw”. Like that 1971 horror classic, Bell’s film finds it is the purest of souls who are in the most danger.

Over the past decade, a handful of excellent and well-crafted films are keeping the folk horror genre fresh and relevant. Pictures such as Gareth Evans’ “The Apostle”, Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”, and especially Robert Eggers’ modern horror masterpiece “The Witch”, used folklore to craft original and effectively creepy horror pictures. These films used their ancient tales to mold a terrifying atmosphere, setting out to scare and unnerve their audiences rather than jolt them with cheap cinematic parlor tricks.

With its literate and well-crafted screenplay and unrelenting atmosphere of terror, William Brent Bell’s “Lord of Misrule” takes its place beside these excellent folk horror pictures. A clever and well-designed film born of myths and folklore rituals, this is one of the creepiest horror films in some time.