Starve Acre Writer/Director Daniel Kokotajlo Opens Up About Adapting the Ominous Book

The genre of folk horror has been a staple of scary movies for decades, as audiences are both drawn in by and terrified of the ideas of ancient evils that never disappear but sometimes stay out of the spotlight. The book Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley taps into many of those narrative themes, while also using evocative language to help immerse the reader in an omnipresent sense of unease. Filmmaker Daniel Kokotajlo was not only excited by the novel itself, but intrigued by the challenge of how to replicate the atmospheric experience into a film. Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre lands in theaters and On Demand on July 26th.

Starve Acre is described, “When their son starts acting strangely, a couple unwittingly allow dark and sinister forces into their home, awakening a long-dormant ancient evil rooted deep in the countryside.” The movie stars Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark.

ComicBook caught up with Kokotajlo to talk the appeal of folk horror, his approach to replicating the source material, and unexpected changes to the project while filming.

ComicBook: Since your previous film Apostasy wasn’t necessarily an outright horror film, although it obviously had some creepy, disturbing elements and themes that you explored, but this is much more rooted in the world of horror, so just as a filmmaker, as a fan, what has your experience with horror been like? Have you always been a huge horror fan or is it really just dependent on being drawn to stories and some of those stories happen to fall in that realm?

Daniel Kokotajlo: I think it’s a bit of both. I grew up watching horror films, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I had quite a religious upbringing, so it was a guilty pleasure of mine. But it was like my first love and because of that, it was a weird relationship with it. I went off it and got back into it and just been like that my whole life, really. But I don’t set out just to make horror film, it just depends on the story, what comes my way. But having said that, I quite would love to continue making creepy, weird, British films my whole life if I could. So I love horror films, always have.

This movie specifically spoke to me because, when it comes to the varieties of horror movies, folk horror, I’m always intrigued and curious and freaked out and invested in them more than a slasher movie. For you, what do you find so compelling about folk horror? And along those lines, when you’re approaching a movie that I feel like is adding to that catalog, did you approach Starve Acre as, “How do I do something different in the folk horror realm?” or, “How do I honor the traditions of folk horror?”

I think it was a bit of both, again. I was working from the novel, so that was unashamedly an ode to old British storytelling, so I stuck to that. And then within that, something happens with … It’s hard to explain without getting into spoilers, but that was what I felt made it distinct from other folk horror, is it got very focused in on the macro and the details of this thing that happens. I thought that was a wicked symbol for this breakdown of this relationship and the rebirth of that into springtime.

So it felt like the book was tapping into something timeless and ancient about the nature of springtime or rebirth or resurrection. And that, for me, that went beyond folk horror. It was like, this is massive. It’s gothic. You’re in the realm of Beauty and the Beast, for me, where it was a story about love and gothic romance in a way. But I also love folk horror, again, because you’re able to do things in a slightly offbeat way. You can deal with the uncanny and strange things, or you can also introduce moments of humor and strangeness that you might not necessarily be able to do in a standard horror.

Also, Andrew’s work is great. It’s great because it’s got this unexpected nature to it. You think you’re getting into something, possibly this, you look at the cover, you read the blurb, and you’re expecting maybe Pet Semetary or something like that, but then as you get into it, it reveals itself to be something quite sensitive and about the little moments in this relationship.

I know that part of Andrew’s book that really appealed to you was the overall vibe of dread, the very atmospheric nature of the book. When it came to trying to capture that sense of dread, that sense of unease, for you, did that come down to the shots? Was it the composition? Was it the pacing? Was it the story itself? Was it the color grading? What was your motivating draw of, “This is how we’re going to replicate that sense of dread,”?

Good question. I think it was a bit of all that, trying to capture nature in that way, in that darker side of nature. And that was by being on location and adapting to what was going on outside, as well. Being able to go outside when there’s a snowstorm or it’s windy or the rain’s pouring down, had to be able to adapt to that. But, also, I think it suits my style the way, I don’t want to sound too poncy, but it’s about the philosophy or the emotion of what the characters are going through, the thought processes and how difficult they become.

It’s about the moments in between the dialogue and how intense these moments are that these characters are going through. I did that a lot in Apostasy, so I thought, “Man, I can really bring my style of acting to this,” and that will hopefully give you the same feeling as Andrew’s work, because his work, it’s all about the emotions of the characters and their inner feelings. It’s all written down in beautiful prose. You can’t really do that in a film. I was hoping I could get that across with watching what the characters are thinking on screen and having that feel, intense in some way, even though you can’t just understand why.

Was there much of a dialogue with Andrew either of how to maintain faithfulness to the source material or even his encouragement of like, “No, do your own thing and deviate from my story however you’d like,”?

We tried a bit at the beginning. We had a few chats, talked about films that influenced us. We shared a lot of that in common. We talked a lot about Nigel Neale and Emma James and stuff like The Wicker Man, so I felt like we’re on the same page with that. And then, I also didn’t want to ruin my experience of the novel. I didn’t want to ask Andrew too many questions about why something was happening or what was the point of something, and maybe even sense that wasn’t how it should work either, this relationship.

It was like, “Okay, look, I appreciate what you’ve done here. It’s got this gothic, mysterious quality to it, and I’ll try and stay true to that while also deviating in certain ways towards the end to create a climax, really.” Again, it was a little bit of both, but it was like a blessing. He gave me his blessing to go with it. And then I showed him in the edit, and he was very happy with it, thankfully.

I know that this was not an easy shoot, just between logistical things and COVID, so many things that you had to deal with on the fly. I’m sure it had an impact on what your original vision was for the story, and so now when you look back and you see the things that were either rewritten or changed or tweaked a little bit, is there anything where you think, “This is the way it always should have been,”? Are there any specific happy accidents, if you will, of, “This is so much better than I ever imagined it to be,” moments like that in the film?

It’s hard, I still have not gotten distance from the production and all the things that I had to deal with, so it’s hard to say still. I think, at the time when I was having to drop scenes because of losing locations or whatever, and then having to stay up all night to then incorporate what was important in that scene into another scene, I appreciated that. I appreciated that immediately. I was like, “Okay, this scene is now, it’s been compacted. It’s denser and richer and more things are happening in the scene as a result,” so it did help in that regard. But there’s nothing major, I don’t think. 

Maybe the biggest difference with the film compared to the script is that the beginning, it has a lighter feel. Right from the beginning of the script, it was maybe a bit dark, so I ended up trimming a lot of that stuff out, saving the horror for after the main event.

What you brought up earlier about how much you want to tell about the background and the mythology of what’s going on here, and maybe you don’t have to dive into it, you don’t have to do a Wikipedia of everything that happened before this movie, but given that there’s a long history in this location of some nefarious figures, even some people who don’t have the best of intentions, do you think that the events of the movie are manifested by the people who bring some negativity to the place? Or do you think it’s a more an ancient evil that maybe some ill-intentioned people are just drawn to this area?

For me, I think these stories of wood sprites and phantoms of the land, a lot of it is about trauma getting passed down, but being manipulated into a digestible version of it, so it turns into a folklore. Because quite a lot of those folk tales or English folk tales are incredibly sad and tragic, and the fantasy elements are just the way that you make it digestible for people. That’s the nature of that style of storytelling. That that’s why you’re able to deal with these stories of grief.

And something more … It’s not just about grief, for me. It became about the nature of violence or the relationship Richard has with his dad and the way his dad treated him, and that was synonymous with the land. But then Richard was a modern man, and he wanted to give his son the life he wish he had there on the land. So he’s trying to fix, rectify it, fix it, but it’s not that easy to do. 

Starve Acre lands in theaters and On Demand on July 26th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.