Raise your hand if you expected the director The Raid series to make a horror movie set at the turn of the century about climate change.
No one?
Understandable, but that’s exactly what’s delivered as Gareth Evans sends Dan Stevens on a two-hour journey to hell (and back?), all conducted by Michael Sheen doing his best impression of Russell Crowe.
Calling Apostle an environmental film works on two counts. It certainly has subtext about treating the planet better, or we’ll suffer the consequences and through that, Evans crafts an exquisite atmosphere against a backdrop of a British cult led by Sheen.
There’s not much that separates the cult from any other fanatics following a crazed leader; until you find the equivalent to its Wicker Man. They live on an island devoid of contract from the outer world beyond kidnapping Stevens’ sister and bringing in more followers from the mainland.
It’s an otherwise desolate place beyond the cult which looks like an early colonial town, entirely self-sustaining. But beneath the grit of the work and naturalism Sheen advocates for, feverishly following a god. It’s not necessarily God in Christianity, though, like many cults of its ilk.
More specifically, they worship a goddess of the land – a woman literally wrapped by vines that feeds the island. But recently, the cult has fallen on hard times as all the food and animals on the island have spoiled as her health is rotting and as a means of survival, Sheen begins sacrificing his cult’s own blood to feed her.
This doesn’t lead to a crisis of faith, but rather a fanatical devotion to keep trying to cleanse the cult, made all the more difficult by the arrival of Stevens to save his captive sister.
Sheen is on to Stevens’ arrival, suspecting there’s a traitor among the new arrivals to the island but thanks to a diversion on the boat heading to the island and defending Sheen, Stevens is entrusted early on allowing him new access to this seedy underworld.
Along his journey to save his sister, new developments emerge, uncovering the corrupt state of his reluctant community. There’s a small B-plot of a teenage romance that veers from the story a bit too much, but al the same adds to Evans’ indictment of extremism and weaponized religion in all forms (this is not a direct attack on Christianity).
Stevens’ character has seen too much of before as, renouncing his faith as a former apostle.
With that extremism at the front of its mind, this obviously turns into a gritty, subversive experience featuring some serious torture porn Eli Roth would be proud of. Things get real medieval.
This is a wild ride from start to finish, providing all the top-notch violence expected of an Evans film with the added bonus of him remixing all that in a horror film. Add in a brutal and witty performance from Stevens matched by Sheen’s own craze, this is undoubtedly one of the most metal films of the year.
Overall Grade: 7 out of 10
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