Hey, it’s a new movie by Gareth Evans, the guy who made the Raid films, and it’s available on Netflix right now! Do I really need to say more? I should hope not, but for the sake of formality, I guess I’ll go ahead and do so.
Apostle is set in the early 1900s. We meet Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens), a scrappy opium addict and former missionary, who is tasked on finding his sister, Jennifer (Elen Rhys). She was taken to an island, and held for ransom by a cult led by the prophet, Malcolm (Michael Sheen). He goes there in secret to find his sister, and realizes that the cult – and the island itself – holds more danger than he anticipated.
One thing about the movie that I loved right off the bat is that it doesn’t waste your time in trying to seduce you into the lives of these cult members. It lets you know right away that there are some really bad people leading the village, and not only that, there is possibly a supernatural element at play here. It has Evans building on some of the ideas he explored with Timo Tjahjanto in the short “Safe Haven” from V/H/S/2, while also taking things into different directions. He has one foot in 70s occult thrillers, and the other in Clive Barker style dark fantasy. And despite setting up the evil presence from the get go, he manages to do well in keeping a sense of mystery, and building more tension as he goes along, especially by changing certain character dynamics from what you’d normally expect.
The film runs just over two hours, and while it could afford to trim a several minutes here and there, it consistently remains engaging. Much of that is due to Dan Stevens’ performance, which is delightfully offbeat, but not to the point where it’s hard to take him seriously. He’s very much damaged from past trauma, and he brings a weird skittishness to the role that makes it far more interesting than if her just playing it straight. Michael Sheen is always great, and he really sinks his teeth into the role of a cult leader, that also smartly strays away from the usual character beats you’d expect from this kind of character in this kind of movie. It’s hard to talk in detail without spoilers, but I’ll just say that it plays with expectations in interesting ways, especially in the second half.
It’s been four years since the release of The Raid 2, but Evans clearly hasn’t missed a beat. The filmmaking is exhilarating and brutal. He is more patient for this particular story, as he slowly builds to each shock, scare, or act of gruesome violence. He once again works with his regular cinematographer, Matt Flannery, and he captures the village and the forest with a surprisingly lush vibrancy that plays as an interesting contrast to the ugliness that occurs within that environment. Even the score by his regular collaborators, Aria Prayogi and Fajar Yuskemal, plays as deeply unsettling, as if an orchestra composing a standard period piece suddenly got possessed by an evil presence, and that it what you end up hearing.
If I had to nitpick about something, I’d say that I would have liked to have seen the film build the relationship between Thomas and Jennifer more in the beginning, so we can becomes more invested. Because as is, a moment towards the end doesn’t quite have the level of impact that I think the filmmakers were intending. And I think the dialogue felt like it was trying way too hard to sound like old-timey English to the point of near parody, which might seem like a flaw, but it honestly added to the pulpy quality that I liked so much about it.
Now, if you’re hoping for The Wicker Man meets The Raid, I think you might come out slightly disappointed. It’s not that those elements aren’t there, but they aren’t as much the focus as you’d expect. The influences are clear, but Gareth Evans weaves in and out of several genres in a way that feels distinctly his own, and for what he’s trying to do here, I think it’s one hell of a success. It’s great to see him evolve as a filmmaker while also fine tuning the qualities that made him so immediately iconic for genre fans. Apostle is a real nasty piece of work, but it’s a bold, propulsive, and satisfyingly nasty piece of work. I can’t wait to see what Evans does next.