Harvest festivals have often provided a sense of eternal dread in horror cinema. They promise abundance, fertility, renewal — and yet so often conceal rot beneath the ribbons. Lord of Misrule arrives knowingly into that lineage, stepping barefoot into the blood-soaked soil cultivated by The Wicker Man, The Witch, Midsommar, and their increasingly crowded offspring. It is a film deeply aware of the terrain it treads, and for much of its runtime, that awareness works in its favour.

Set within a secluded village bound by tradition and silence, the film opens with a familiar yet potent inciting wound: the disappearance of the daughter of the town’s new priest during the annual harvest festival. From that absence, Lord of Misrule builds a creeping architecture of dread — one not reliant on jump scares or grotesquerie, but on the slow realisation that this town does not merely remember its past… it still feeds it.

Folk Horror with its Roots Intact

What distinguishes Lord of Misrule from lesser folk horror pastiches is its patience. The film allows itself to breathe within the rhythms of rural life — the rituals, the half-smiles, the whispered warnings that feel less like exposition than confession. There is a welcome refusal to rush headlong into spectacle; instead, dread accumulates in glances, silences, and the heavy implication that something ancient still demands tribute.

The concept itself is elegantly simple: a malevolent spirit bound to the land, sustained through sacrifice, disguised beneath centuries of polite ceremony. It is horror not as invasion, but as inheritance — evil not arriving from without, but preserved lovingly from within. This thematic alignment with generational guilt and communal complicity places Lord of Misrule firmly within folk horror’s most enduring philosophical concerns.

Anchored by Flesh and Bone

Central to the film’s effectiveness are its performances, which elevate the material beyond mere genre exercise.

Tuppence Middleton delivers a measured, emotionally grounded performance that anchors the film’s more ethereal elements. She brings a quiet steel to her role — grief without hysteria, resolve without bombast — allowing the horror to orbit her rather than overwhelm her. She becomes the audience’s surrogate not through fear, but through endurance.

Ralph Ineson, meanwhile, is perfectly cast. His voice alone seems carved from oak and grave soil, and he carries the weight of rural menace with effortless authority. Ineson understands folk horror instinctively: his presence suggests not villainy, but inevitability — as though the land itself has learned how to speak through him.

Together, Middleton and Ineson provide the film with its most compelling dynamic: modern skepticism locked in slow collision with ritualistic fatalism.

When the Earth Cracks

Yet for all its atmospheric command, Lord of Misrule ultimately stumbles where folk horror so often does — in its final act.

After spending so long carefully cultivating ambiguity, dread, and moral tension, the film opts for a more conventional and hurried resolution. The climax, rather than deepening the film’s thematic unease, simplifies it. What was once uncanny becomes explicit; what was once philosophical becomes procedural. The film trades unease for explanation, dread for closure — and in doing so, loses some of the strange power it so patiently summoned.

This is not a disastrous collapse, but it is a deflating one. The third act feels less like a natural culmination than a narrative obligation — as though the film, having wandered confidently into ancient woods, suddenly remembered it had to find its way back out.

A Worthy Addition to the Circle

Still, to dwell solely on its shortcomings would be to ignore what Lord of Misrule accomplishes with confidence and restraint. In an era where folk horror has become increasingly stylised and self-conscious, the film remains refreshingly earnest. It is not ironic. It is not detached. It believes in its mythology — and that belief carries it far, even when its footing falters.

Lord of Misrule stands as a strong, if imperfect, addition to contemporary folk horror. It may not redefine the genre, but it respects it deeply — and in a landscape crowded with hollow ritual and empty symbolism, that alone makes it worth entering the circle.

• Saul Muerte

LORD OF MISRULE will be available to Rent or buy on Digital at: Apple TV, Prime Video, Google TV, YouTube, Fetch (AU), Foxtel Store (AU), SKY Store (NZ), and Neon (NZ). Own it on DVD at JB Hi-Fi and Sanity from FEBRUARY 4TH!