[wpdevart_youtube]hSntj-yfdBU[/wpdevart_youtube]
Gwen
****
Dir: William McGregor
Starring: Maxine Peake, Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Richard Harrington
(UK, 15 1hr 24mins)
An atmospheric psychological horror that gets under the skin and makes superb use of an unforgiving Snowdonia landscape. Set in the 1800s, this sparse story follows a family battling against the elements, the superstitions of the locals and an encroaching mining company. Eleanor Worthington-Cox is Gwen, the eldest of two daughters, trying to support her mother Elen, a mostly well South Walean-accented Maxine Peake, and younger sister Mari (Jodi Innes). Her father has gone off to war and is expected back any day now, but as the months roll on and he is nowhere to be seen hope diminishes.
Her mother becomes ill, suddenly lapsing into fits, and despite a kindly doctor’s help, her sickness is attributed more to something supernatural than physical. A heart is found nailed to their door, potatoes are riddled with maggots, their sheep are all killed in the night and Elen takes to wandering the hills in a white night gown in the dead of night. Could she be a witch?
Mining industrialist Mr Wynne, a superbly threatening Mark Lewis Jones, wants her land and with the aid of Richard Harrington’s Edward Morris they try to force her off her property, gently at first but soon turning to darker methods. Events escalate and writer/director McGregor, a veteran of TV’s Poldark, deftly navigates the line between behaviour that could be unnatural or pure vengeful humanity. Atmospheric and often very disturbing, a sense of dread prevails throughout as Gwen struggles to keep the farm and her mother’s sanity afloat. Worthington-Cox is excellent in the titular role, balancing the responsibility pressed upon her with the fear of the unknown. Snowdonia has never looked more bleakly beautiful. This is an arthouse horror, poetic and dreamlike with great performances and a real sense of struggle and time and place.
words Keiron Self
Opens July 19
Read the interview with director William McGregor here