The Severed Sun

This was a good movie. I think I loved it because I have been thinking about changing my lifestyle and joining an Amish community and then lo and behold I was given a sign which was this movie. I just told my family about my plans to move to Lancaster, PA and they were supportive of my decision. Thank you Magpie!

Not great.

The only credit I'll give for this film is that the cinematography is stunning. However, there are SOO many establishing landscape shots, which at the end felt pointeless. But this is the only postive aspect. The film is terribly written, extremely overacted with zero conection to the characters. The plot sounds ok on the surface, but these negatives overshadow it. Honestly, I'd avoid this one.

This movie, somehow, has 78% on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not even going to honor this derivative pastiche of Folk Horror's Greatest Hits with the word "film. " This movie is pretty shots strung together by a boring, all-too-familiar story, sprinkled with some clunky, half-baked feminist (fauxminist?) moments along the way to the see-it-coming-from-a-meter-away ending. The religious community, never receiving any exposition besides being Amishesque and Christian, is so generic that they fade into the background until called upon to be a mob. Wooden acting aside from the main cast, "The Severed Sun" mercifully underutilizes these awkward performances by frequently focusing on the real beauty of the film (and the source of my two skull rating): the absolutely beautiful setting. The costuming is pretty good, too, and the colors of the film very vivid. Beyond that, I'm pressed to praise this movie's other elements. Some stated that the pauses in "The Severed Sun" give time for the audience to reflect. Perhaps that's true, but I suspect that many will take these numerous pauses throughout the movie to reflect on all the other much better, much more substantial Folk Horror films they could've watched instead of this stinker. Several times while watching, I asked myself, "What does this movie want to be?" You see remnants of Eggers' "The Witch," Piers Haggard's "The Blood on Satan's Claw," even "The Blair Witch Project" with its sudden, disjointed foray into black-and-white shaky cam. "The Severed Sun" spent so much time replicating its genre of choice that it didn't spend time making the audience know its story or characters. Who the hell are these people? And why should I care? It tries (and fails) to cram Folk Horror imagery into its runtime so much that the movie forgets that it's supposed to be embodying Folk Horror elements. The landscape is obviously present, and beautifully so. The isolation: sure, whatever, it's some sorta farm cult in a pretty pasture. Time setting is never really established, but the protagonist is called a "monster fucker," which is a remarkably modern phrase that made me laugh more than immerse me into the story. Anyway, the skewed morality of the film is apparent right from the start, but it's never developed beyond the movie vaguely gesturing at common tropes of the genre: demons, forests, spooky happenings, familial strife. And the happening, the final element of Folk Horror? It's a quick and showy (sn)oozefest of black goop and a shoddy, kinda-sorta "reveal" of the uncompelling forest twig demon thing. It's ineffective and unsatisfying. The characters are bland and not fleshed out, so their genre roles (Witchy Woman, matronly accuser crone, Bad Dad) become the key detail which with to differentiate them from one another. If you're a genre fan and critic like me, watching "The Severed Sun" will probably turn into a 2-hour motif spotting from a Folk Horror bingo card. If anything, this movie reminds us of how far the Folk Horror genre has come in terms of availability and development of its thematic elements, character tropes, and storytelling.

For a starving community struggling to grow food, they managed to find a good supply of tomatoes to throw at Magpie when the occasion called for it