Lord of Misrule brims with familiar folk horror trappings. Creepy, motionless kids in animal masks? Check. Ominous handwoven totems dangling from trees? Oh yeah. Melodic chants with sinister undercurrent? Aplenty. Crude, expository drawings of pagan lore that explain everything? You bet. We even get the familiar thematic elements of organized religion juxtaposed with agricultural European mythmaking. Order is challenged by chaos, rule by misrule. And it’s all for the harvest!
At its most effective, William Brent Bell’s latest horror film blurs the line between the sacred and the profane. That’s appropriate given the actual history surrounding the Lord of Misrule’s role in the Feast of Fools, a real British festival from the Middle Ages. Historically, during the feast, ecclesiastical ritual was parodied and the church’s higher and lower clergy would swap roles (“fool” was another word for “humble” at the time). Bell’s film focuses on the theme of reversal in the paganized Feast of Fools celebration found here. As spooky, influential denizen Jocelyn Abney (Ralph Ineson) explains in a climactic moment, the feast ends with the appearance of a black sun in the sky, light swapping places with darkness, fear and anger becoming the way that the townsfolk show love.
In these moments, Tom de Ville’s script gives Bell plenty to work with, but at other times, it’s intensely derivative of folk horror forebears. There are moments that almost feel directly lifted from Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic The Wicker Man, and there’s a smattering of Midsommar-esque moments as well. Basically, there’s no lack of fire. When the townsfolk speak reverentially about the sinister spirit driving the chaos, they do so with the mantra “He stands in the fields and waits,” which calls to mind Children of the Corn’s description of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. And there’s even a scene in which a spiritually afflicted barefoot woman in a nightgown offers a warning and then urinates on the floor, à la Regan in The Exorcist.
Much like The Wicker Man, Lord of Misrule revolves around the disappearance of a young girl. In Hardy’s film, it’s a police officer with a hell of a puritanical bent who arrives on the island of Summerisle in search of the girl and who runs afoul of the unconventional local culture. Here, we get actual clergy, with newly appointed vicar Becca (Tuppence Middleton) desperately searching for a girl—her own daughter.
At the heart of the festival, and thus the film, is Gallowgog, a towering, antlered demon of the fields who, unbeknownst to Becca and her milquetoast husband Henry (Matt Stokoe), periodically claims a child as a tithe. Their daughter Grace (Evie Templeton) is thrilled to act as this year’s Harvest Angel, a role that sees her assist in driving out Gallowgog from the town in an elaborate costumed roleplay. When she goes missing in the forest amid the disorienting commotion of the festivities, Becca leaves no stone unturned as she tries to shine light on the darkness of the town’s soul.
Yet unlike The Wicker Man, there’s little mystery driving Bell’s film. Early on, it’s clear that Grace’s disappearance is indeed supernatural in origin. It’s also predictable. After all, the May Queen goes missing in The Wicker Man, so the Harvest Angel is bound to do so here. We’re even introduced to Grace as a creepy kid who weaves dolls out of hair and holds a scissors to her pet bunny’s throat. We come to find out that the otherworldly aura of the town’s children may be a product of Abney, who leads a Nature Class at school that delves into local legend to an unsavory degree. In essence, Abney is the equivalent here of The Wicker Man’s Lord Summerisle, played in that film by Christopher Lee. (Incidentally, the late Lee’s autobiography is titled Lord of Misrule.)
Ineson is a menacing presence as Abney, having previously cut his folk horror teeth by starring in Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015). While that film had a supernatural goat named Black Phillip, goat imagery also abounds within Lord of Misrule and Gallowgog’s dwelling place is the metaphysical Black Barn. Abney may hold sway over the townsfolk’s fear, but even he’s afraid of the Black Barn.
While the lush imagery, especially the plethora of masks and the Gallowgog creature design, remain striking throughout, and the foreboding score and sound design manage to stoke at least superficial tension, most of the performances outside of Ineson’s land flat. Middleton has her moments as the determined lead, but even her grief and desperation feel somewhat contrived. Moreover, the film introduces potentially compelling themes that it leaves unexplored. Folk horror so often involves pushing back at mainstream religious tradition and the patriarchy, and there’s a hint of that here—Becca’s claim that the townsfolk are falsely believing “old stories” meets the retort that she preaches old stories for a living. But the fact that a woman serving as a vicar is historically rare is never addressed here, leaving additional sources of tension and commentary untapped.
As a result, Lord of Misrule looks great but has almost nothing new to say. As a genre exercise, the film offers little more than a stylish retread of superior movies. Folk horror enthusiasts will likely find it, in turns, comforting and frustrating in its familiarity. But damn if that melodic chanting doesn’t get stuck in the viewer’s head.
Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing
The post Lord of Misrule appeared first on Spectrum Culture.