me: i just want the raid 3
gareth evans: fuck you

hey hey thank fuck organised religious cults are only in fiction ha ha right *sweats*

first hour is kind of rough, lots of cliche characterization and ugly desaturated, handheld camera work (with no clear indication why its been shot this way until the last like 30m), but this hugely picks up around the time it goes full The Blood on Satan's Claw supernatural cult horror an hour in and then for some ungodly reason caps the whole thing off with 30m of "what if Witchfinder General was a torture porn movie?" unsure whether this is Actually Good or not but the bizarre whiplash of witnessing evans' paranoid, untethered photography and penchant for bonkers gruesomeness infect a 70s british folk horror locale in that finale was enough to get my lizard brain going and forget all the times actors opened their mouths in this. gotta be some value in that, right?

The moments of physical action in this will have you drooling for what begs to be THE RAID meets THE WICKER MAN, but Evans is way more interested in a (very) slow to roll cult thriller. Extra points for not stringing you along with a "what's really going on here?" tease; this is very up-front even if it's 20 minutes too long. Anyway Evans can shoot the shit out of anything and this gets suitably gnarly when it counts.

me: hehe look it’s matthew crawley! what’s matthew doing he—

dan stevens busting through the door and grabbing me by the throat: NO! NO! IT HAS BEEN SIX YEARS! I LOOK SO DIFFERENT! I DO HORROR THRILLERS NOW! IVE CHANGED

me: [spits in his face] HOW COULD YOU LEAVE LADY MARY ALL ON HER OWN 

dan stevens is perfection

Personal highlights: camera angles, camera movement, score, story, direction, and originality.

Gareth Evans of The Raid fame finally answered the nagging question of what Martin Scorsese's Silence would be like with decapitations, lobotomies and actual witchcraft.

Jokes aside, Apostle is a nifty little genre exercise which co-opts textures and aesthetics with such childlike glee and carelessness it's virtually difficult not to be charmed by it.

I especially adore the fact the Evans could barely contain his inner Raid auteur during this film's fight scenes. His signature hyper-kinetic blocking and handheld camera make a glorious return every time a character gets involved in rather grisly fisticuffs.

Gareth Evans is the new Gareth Edwards

very gore and very good

One of the best sound designs for a horrormovie in recent years.

The spiritual remake of The Wicker Man (1973) we deserved instead of the very unfortunate Nicolas Cage movie.

Buena historia, hay:
Buen gore
Elementos magicos
Elementos religiosos
Pensamientos utopicos
Guiños a pensamientos incestuosos
Enfermedad mental
Secuestro y otros crimenes
Hay mucho de donde agarrar

No estoy muy seguro de que mierda pasó al final, pero sería muy certero decir que todo antes de eso es la mejor película que pude haber imaginado.

That was a really nice breath of fresh air for Netflix horror. A very well accomplished slow burner with an ending sequence that'll disturb you deeply.