Apostle

Wow, what a gruesome, grisly film! Apostle, Netflix's latest offering, from the director Gareth Evans, is one of the bloodiest films I've seen in a long time. Reflecting on it, I'm not sure if I liked it all that much, but I must say I was riveted. The film has all sorts of torture, from a man having his skull drilled into to another losing his fingers in a meat grinder.

The film is set in 1905 on an island off the coast of Wales. A mysterious cult who worships a pagan goddess lives there, and they have kidnapped a rich girl for ransom because they're running out of food. The girl's wayward brother (Dan Stevens) is sent off to rescue her, going undercover and finding a very weird place.

Apostle has elements of The Wicker Man, in that both are depicting a pagan society that doesn't play very nice. Michael Sheen is the "prophet," and Mark Lewis Jones is his chief enforcer, who happens to have a pretty daughter who is seeing a boy on the side. She gets pregnant, and let's just say her father is not happy.

Stevens finds there are reasonable people on the island, such as Lucy Boynton as Sheen's daughter. As with any religion, schisms erupt, and Stevens finds out that the goddess they worship is very much real (the one supernatural element in the film). She is fed blood in exchange for giving the villagers enough to eat, but she hasn't been keeping up her end of the bargain. She's guarded by a fellow called The Grinder, whose head is swathed in bandages.

All of this makes for a very effective creep show, but at times the film falls into cliches. Stevens is always able to wiggle his way out of tight spots, and people are saved at the last possible moment more than a few times. It's a bit too long, at two hours ten minutes, and one wonders why certain people aren't just killed (it's to keep the plot going). Then again, I would have liked more info on the people who founded the island--how did they get all the building materials there? How did they recruit? Perhaps this could be handled in a prequel, which I would tune in for.