An island of ghosts and an ocean of guilt plague a grief-stricken widower in this moody horror movie.
With “Shepherd,” the Welsh writer and director Russell Owen shows us how to accrue a great deal of atmosphere with very little fuss. Callum Donaldson’s marvelously icy soundscape might be doing much of the heavy lifting, but it’s Owen’s slow and steady directing style — favoring patient reveals over swift scares — that keeps this ominous horror tale firmly on track.
The setup is simplicity itself. Eric (Tom Hughes, perfectly pallid and pained), a brooding widower haunted by vivid nightmares after his wife’s death, takes a job as a shepherd on a desolate Scottish island. When not huddling in a creaking, tumbledown cottage with unreliable phone service, Eric and his collie, Baxter, tend to a scattered herd of horned sheep. In a silence broken only by the howling wind and the clanging bell of a nearby lighthouse, Eric’s macabre hallucinations intensify. When, one morning, his estranged mother (Greta Scacchi) appears in his kitchen, ranting against the “ungodly woman” who was his wife, Eric fears he may be losing his mind.
The creepy ferry operator with the milky eye (Kate Dickie) seems to know a thing or two about Eric’s past, but — like the larger narrative — she refuses to share. This withholding may irritate some viewers, but Owen, drawing from several Welsh ghost stories (including the inspiration for Robert Eggers’s 2019 fantasy, “The Lighthouse”) remains unapologetically enigmatic. Coaxing us to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion on the strength of Hughes’ potent central performance and the moldy richness of Richard Stoddard’s cinematography, the director displays an assuredness with Gothic tone that steadily strums our nerves.
“Run, Mr. Black,” a chapter heading advises near the end of the movie. I was way ahead of it.
Shepherd
Rated R for mental distress and mutilated animals. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
