Chris Flackett
Britain has a fine tradition of making films in the folk-horror tradition, with such classics as The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General globally celebrated across the world as excellent examples of British art and horror storytelling (something carried over into America with films like Robert Eggers‘s The Witch, and Ari Aster’s Midsommar). While not quite at the same level as those films, Dean Puckett’s feature debut, The Severed Sun, is a more-than-worthy addition to the folk-horror cannon.
Taking place in a small, unnamed, isolated church community, The Severed Sun follows Magpie (Emma Appleton), the daughter of the community’s authoritarian leader, known as “The Pastor” or ‘Father’ (Toby Stephens). The Pastor rules through a scarily controlled anger, expressed through apocalyptic sermons and working his flock to the bone in the fields. Magpie has been living a terrifying existence with her son and stepson, as her husband, Howard, repeatedly beats her. Things change when Magpie comes under the influence of a shadowy, supernatural entity known only as “The Beast.” Howard dies in mysterious circumstances, spreading panic in the community, setting Magpie up for a confrontation with not only her peers but also The Pastor, who is looking to quash talk of The Beast once and for all.
If you consider yourself a connoisseur of folk-horror, The Severed Sun strikes a lot of familiar beats: an isolated community; a rural setting; a deceitful male leader; a pagan-style mythos. That’s fine—genre tropes are tropes for a reason—but it also works because the film uses these tropes very effectively. The Pastor is a compelling antagonist, his authoritarian nature switching between smooth speech and violent outburst at the drop of a pin, a mind walking a fine line between manipulation and madness—a moment where he suddenly throttles Magpie is chilling. He is also not invulnerable. When the community accuses Magpie of having committed murder, The Pastor’s smug confidence in her innocence slowly erodes as more and more evidence is presented, including evidence of The Beast, who the film subtly suggests The Pastor had not to that point believed in, having played up to the myth for his own end. Credit must go to Toby Stephens for a nuanced performance of a nuanced character.
A bookend at the start and end of the film talks of the moon and the sun as lovers, leaving the “bastard offspring, the shadow, behind in the space left over. Magpie, as our protagonist, is perhaps the moon, often associated in myth with the feminine divine. To be sure, Magpie is made to feel very aware of her femininity, in counterbalance to the confrontational male authoritarianism that impresses itself on her at every opportunity, whether it is her father’s disdain, Howard’s physical violence, or local man Fred believing he needs to carry an axe to threaten a woman. This is a world where women toil in the fields and subjugate themselves to their husbands, turning a blind eye to whatever immorality they may commit. You wonder if the community doesn’t hate Magpie for her supposed black magic, but because she refuses to toe the line, behave, keep quiet. Emma Appleton plays Magpie beautifully with a steely reserve, determination, vulnerability and an occasional joy in her disobedience. This is feminine rage as folk-horror resistance against patriarchy and communal pettiness, and it’s a blast to watch.
While I won’t go into a great level of detail about The Beast, as you should definitely experience it without spoilers, I will say that it looks astonishingly impressive, an electric spectral shadow infused with the rural location. Puckett cleverly uses dissolves and translucence to make ‘The Beast’ appear to meld naturally into the environment, as if it is an actual physical part of that environment, and not something outside of it haunting the trees. There are moments when it appears to melt into a kind of inky black coating on the bark and the leaves, like a sinister sap that infects all those who touch it. While we never really know what The Beast is, what we see is tantalising for those of us who like characters like this as a jump-off point to daydream from—the mind boggles at what ‘The Beast’ could be!
Gore hounds may not get a lot out of The Severed Sun, but for that, the film is actually surprisingly bloody in places, often shown in subtle, quick cuts and glimpses of nastiness, such as a hand being cut off, that force the mind to process what it just saw, thereby causing it to linger in the mind’s eye that little bit longer. On a similar note, an argument could be made that at 1 hour 20 minutes long, the film could be considered a little slight. In actuality, though, the shorter length works in The Severed Sun’s favour, streamlining the narrative so that there’s no fat, no sagging middle. The film gets straight to the point, but in a way that it feeds you information in a natural way as it goes along, rather than information dumping on you. But at no point did I find myself lacking answers, apart from points the film would wish to remain intentionally ambiguous on.
The Severed Sun might be comparatively low-key, but you’d be foolish to miss out on this righteous piece of female rage and folk-horror. Get yourself into the woods and encounter ‘The Beast’ for yourself without delay!
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