Apostle (film)

Apostle
Official poster
Directed by	Gareth Evans
Produced by	Aram Tertzakian Ed Talfan Gareth Evans
Written by	Gareth Evans
Starring	Dan Stevens Lucy Boynton Mark Lewis Jones Bill Milner Kristine Froseth Paul Higgins Michael Sheen
Music by	Fajar Yusekemal Aria Prayogi
Cinematography	Matt Flannery
Edited by	Gareth Evans
Production companies	XYZ Films Severn Screen One More One Productions
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	21 September 2018 (2018-09-21) (Fantastic Fest) 12 October 2018 (2018-10-12)
Running time	129 minutes[1]
Country	United States United Kingdom

Apostle is a 2018 British-American period horror film written and directed by Gareth Evans and starring Dan Stevens, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth and Michael Sheen. It had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in September 2018. The film began streaming on Netflix on October 12, 2018. It has received positive reviews from critics for its visuals, cinematography, performances, and unique blend of horror genres.

Plot

In 1905, Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) travels to a remote Welsh island to rescue his beloved sister, Jennifer after she is kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult demanding a ransom for her safe return. Thomas is a former missionary who was tortured when he attempted to introduce Christianity to Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, and has abandoned religion and his belief in God.

Thomas arrives on the island pretending to be a believer in Prophet Malcolm Howe (Michael Sheen), the cult's leader, who said he was shipwrecked on the island along with two other convicts, Frank and Quinn. Howe also claims to speak for a goddess who inhabits the island. The cult is cut off from society, and its people refuse to pay taxes to the King. The island was historically uninhabited as the soil is tainted. Despite this, crops would grow until recently, when the crops began failing and the animals stopped breeding. Facing starvation, Prophet Malcolm devised a plan to kidnap someone wealthy for a large ransom to feed his people.

While in church, Thomas sees a white-haired old woman, her hair down, walking outside the window. Thomas sneaks out of his cabin after curfew, and while peering in windows, witnesses a man cutting his wife's arm and draining blood into a jar and, in another house, sees Malcolm going into his cellar via a hidden trapdoor. He also stumbles across teenagers Jeremy and Ffion sneaking home. He goes into the boarding house where he was staying and is shocked to see jars of blood lined up the hallway outside each door. As the jar outside his door is empty, he pours blood into it from another jar but is spotted by the white-haired woman. He then draws a map of the houses on the island and hides it under the desk.

The next day, Thomas shows his sister's photograph to Jeremy, who admits that he saw her tied up on the boat one month ago, and was told of the ransom plot from his father, Frank. Jeremy urges Thomas not to pay them the ransom. Thomas tells Jeremy that he will reveal Jeremy's relationship with Ffion unless he helps him.

Malcolm questions Thomas and other men who recently arrived to find out which one was out after curfew. One of the men, shouting "for King and Country!", attempts to stab Malcolm but is held back by the other men before being speared by his guards. Thomas is slashed in the chest first, but Andrea, Malcolm's beautiful daughter, stitches him up.

That night, Malcolm parades Jennifer through the village, claiming she is a traitor and spy and will be killed if her co-conspirator does not reveal herself. However, he only cuts off some of her hair. Malcolm organises a party the next night as a ruse so he can search the boarding house rooms for the ransom money, but finds Thomas' map instead. Thomas accesses a tunnel underneath Malcolm's house, but Malcolm is waiting for him on the other side with a shotgun. Thomas takes an alternate route through a tunnel of viscera, and encounters an old woman who shrieks at and chases him. He turns back and escapes to a beach cave with strange markings. Andrea finds him and brings him fresh clothes, and he tells her that Jennifer is no spy, but was kidnapped.

Malcolm goes to the old woman, their goddess, who is inside a nest and is surrounded by trees, and feeds her his blood while accusing her of poisoning his crops. As he feeds her, the trees around her sprout new leaves, and a bloodied man with a bizarre mask of twigs (known as The Grinder) on pulls a person in a sack, likely Jennifer and suspends in the sack with a hook.

Ffion informs Jeremy she is pregnant. Knowing her father, Quinn, will not allow them to be together, they decide to leave the island and elope. Quinn finds her packing her things and beats her. Discovering she is pregnant by Jeremy, he tells her that the child will be a deformed abomination, and he performs an abortion with a knife, killing her. Jeremy returns to Ffion's home and finds her murdered, and he gets into a fight with Quinn that spills outside, where Quinn accuses Jeremy of killing his daughter. Thomas and Jeremy are captured, and Thomas is forced to watch Jeremy tortured and brutally murdered in a ritualistic killing. Quinn then declares Malcolm a false prophet and demands he proves himself by killing Thomas, while Andrea begs him not to.

Frank returns with a gun and says "she has to die," allowing Thomas to escape. He flees to an isolated cabin, where the masked man kills Frank as and Malcolm arrive. Quinn shoots Malcolm in the shoulder, sending him crashes into a trap door. Thomas hides in the house, where he sees a dismembered Jeremy and The Grinder force feeding the blood to the goddess in her nest, causing the leaves to sprout again. Thomas frees Jennifer from her sack but is hit in the head by The Grinder. He wakes to find himself strapped to a table and being pulled into a giant meat grinder, which severs several of his fingers before he manages to kill The Grinder with the cables.

Quinn captures Jennifer and ties her up alongside Andrea, whom he tells her father is dead. He brags that he is the one who imprisoned the goddess in the tree nest after they arrived when he realised what she could do for them. He said Malcolm didn't have the courage to feed her what she really needed, and tells the women that they will be impregnated repeatedly by him and their babies sacrificed to feed her.

The goddess speaks to Thomas in a strange language, causing him to go into a trance. She then asks him to set her free, and he lights her tree nest on fire.

As the village burns and the villagers flee to the boat, Thomas returns and stabs Quinn in the neck, but Quinn manages to stab him repeatedly in the ribs before dying. Thomas frees the women but is unable to make it to the boat because of his injuries. He begs them to pray for him. As the boat leaves, an injured Malcolm finds Thomas lying in the grass. Thomas sees the grass growing up around him where his blood is dripping and begins laughing as the grass covers him and pierces his skin, his eyes becoming like the goddess's own.

Cast

• Dan Stevens as Thomas Richardson
• Michael Sheen as Malcolm Howe
• Mark Lewis Jones as Quinn
• Paul Higgins as Frank
• Lucy Boynton as Andrea Howe, Malcolm’s daughter
• Bill Milner as Jeremy, Frank's son and Ffion's lover
• Kristine Froseth as Ffion, Quinn’s daughter and Jeremy's lover
• Elen Rhys as Jennifer Richardson, Thomas' sister
• Sharon Morgan as Her, the cult's goddess
• Sebastian McCheyne as The Grinder, a bloodied humanoid creature and keeper of Her

Ross O'Hennessy, and Gareth Pierce appear as unnamed cultists.

Production

On November 2, 2016, it was announced that Gareth Evans was working on a new project that he would write and direct.^[2] Dan Stevens was confirmed to be cast in the lead role.^[3] In March 2017, the film was picked up by Netflix.^[4] Later that month, it was announced that Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton, Bill Milner and Kristine Froseth had joined the cast.^[5] Filming started in April 2017.^[6] The film was largely shot on a set built at Margam Park in Neath Port Talbot, Wales.^[7]

Release

The film premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2018.^[8] It began streaming on Netflix on October 12, 2018.^[9]

References

External links

• Apostle on IMDb