Revision "Apostle": The new horror of Netflix is ​​a cut above your regular Spooky movie

The latest incursion of Netflix in the great original cinema, Gareth Evans Apostle, will feel familiar at first. There have already been comparisons with The wicker man in the early critics of the film, in which Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) was to infiltrate a mysterious cult of the islands to save his sister, bought by fanatical cult leader and charismatic Malcolm (Michael Sheen).

The first exchanges cut across almost all the boxes of the horror big book: a rare but deeply disturbing title sequence, a perilous journey on the island mentioned above, allusions to an invisible, but apparently not so kind, superior power guiding the inhabitants of the cult. laughing even masked children. Evans spares no effort to build a terrible world to explore for the first hour of the film.

So how do you make an effective horror film in 2018? Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere and the first half of Apostle is a master class in the exercise. What's in the shed that Malcolm keeps hidden from the rest of the compound, accessible only through a secret tunnel from his own house? Why do the inhabitants of the island leave at night jars filled with their own blood in front of their doors? Evans creates tension as a seasoned horror filmmaker, although it's about his first foray into the genre (and, in fact, his first film made in English, as a result of Indonesian successes widely appreciatedLowering and The raid 2.

As Thomas, Stevens excels in his habits. If you've seen an episode of Legionthe essential: it is empathic and interesting, but intensely (almost furiously) confused. Better casting around him, including Sheen and Lucy Boynton, who plays Andrea, the daughter of Malcolm.

Sheen spoke to GQ before the release of the film about Malcolm, which counteracts the tendency of evil and goose bumps for harm and goose bumps. "It's a lot more interesting [for me] if I play against someone who is really trying to create something that will benefit people, something that will be for the greater good and yet, it has been corrupted and turned into something that is destroying people's lives rather than to help them. "

In fact, Malcolm's bow is much more interesting than Thomas's, who has little to learn or learn once his sister's fate is revealed. It's been Sheen's best role for a long time, even considering her place in the pantheon of the best stars invited to 30 rocks the story ("There's only one Wesley Snipe," he reminds me later in our interview). Malcolm has more complex problems to solve. His co-founders of the island do not quite agree on how he runs the place, you see, and when the truth behind this "higher power" that we heard about earlier is fully revealed, Malcolm's plans become all the more transparent and precarious.

Evans himself said that he would prefer that the political machinations of the back half of the film feel under-textual, but it's hard not to read some very modern allegories in the power struggles being waged by the film. ego between Malcolm, right-hand man Quinn (Mark Lewis Jones) and Frank (Paul Higgins, whose In the loop the scene is engraved in my memory as one of the best moments of all time).

It is in this back part that the well-built horror machine of the first half gives way to a more political and character-driven tone, in the vein of quieter but equally intense works like that of Ben Wheatley. . A field in England (what Evans said was indeed a major influence). To his credit, Apostle Occasionally provides an incredibly creative gore to remind us that we are watching a genre film.

By the time Apostle reaches its end of the game, which plays rather amusing like a mashup of L & # 39; Exorcist and Small shop of horrorsthe terror created by his constant approach to the construction of the island's mystique dissipates and, despite all Evans' efforts, we get a fairly mechanical conclusion of the action film. The last picture gives us one last disturbing image, but it is neither a surprise nor a persistent impression. But at the same time Apostle his work to achieve this is an admirable example of what modern horror can be.