Darkland Distribution is releasing British horror Shepherd tomorrow (21st February) on Blu-ray and Digital Download, so we checked out the new movie that stars Tom Hughes (Red Joan, Victoria), Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones, The Witch), Gaia Weiss (Vikings, Medici) & Greta Scacchi (The Player) and is directed by Russell Owen.Â
Running from grief after the mysterious death of his wife, Eric Black (Tom Hughes) takes a job as a shepherd. Trapped alone on a majestic weather-beaten island with an ominous secret. One man’s spiralling madness meets a vengeful supernatural force. What starts as the perfect wind-swept escape becomes a race to save his sanity and his life.
At first glance of the teaser trailer some time back, I had been looking forward to checking out Shepherd and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the movie, what I thought maybe a movie that uses jump scares and the usual ideas of horror most films, an idea I got from the trailer, I found myself watching a movie that is very much psychological and strange that grabbed my attention.
Right from the very start of Shepherd we are set at unease with the superb soundtrack from Callum Donaldson that perfectly suits the atmosphere of a movie that takes us on a dreamlike and nightmare states we journey with Eric (Hughes) to the strange and foreboding island that the majority of the movie is set on.
The strangeness of the movie works very well to set you up for a sense of not really knowing what is happening from time to time, is Eric dreaming or are the strange things that are happening on the island really taking place, or is he even on the island!
The cottage that Eric is staying in is certainly a scary looking place and not from just the outside, the dilapidated building sits on the island only accompanied by a strange lighthouse that constantly has a bell ringing out to warn of oncoming fog, or could the lighthouse hold another meaning.
Once inside the cottage, Eric tries to make the most of his accommodation, but this is only the start of the strangeness of the island, the sound production of Shepherd works brilliantly throughout the film, staring with the cottage as we hear the creaks and groans of the building in the harsh weather of the island. You can almost feel as you are with Eric and enduring the oncoming fear.
Eric and Baxter, his dog, start tending to the sheep on the Island and as requested by the strange Fisher who is played brilliantly by Kate Dickie, Eric starts to keep a journal of what is happening or so he should be keeping one, but he soon finds other journals with strange drawings and scribblings in.
With the arrival of an unexpected guest, one-morning things take a turn for the even more strange and we get the feeling that there is so much more to what is happening to Eric, it certainly seems that he isn’t just there to be tending sheep, as each day passes more strange occurrences happen.
Writer and director Russell Owen has certainly brought us an unsettling horror, that doesn’t play on the gore factor, but the psychological fears and they work very well, there are some moments that have you wondering what the heck is happening but you soon come to realise that not all is what it may seem and this works for the material.
As I mentioned earlier the soundtrack adds to the atmosphere of Shepherd and with the inclusion of the sound design, we get a movie that really opens up the horror genre to using sound not just for jump scares.
Throughout the movie, we have some great cinematography with nice aerial shots of the landscapes and uses of shades of colour filtering that work great, the dark scenes work very well throughout the films.
Shepherd wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was a pleasant surprise and Tom Hughes certainly has a good screen presence as Eric as the character’s sanity is put to the test on the remote and somewhat mysterious island.
Shepherd is out Blu-ray and Digital Download from 21st February.
An Eerily Dramatic Movie
Movie title: Shepherd
Movie description: A young Scottish shepherd, following the death of his unfaithful wife, fights to maintain his own sanity when the past catches up to him.
Date published: February 20, 2022
Country: UK
Duration: 1h 43m
Director(s): Russell Owen
Actor(s): Kate Dickie, Tom Hughes, Jamie Marie Leary
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Karen Woodham is the founder and owner of the Blazing Minds. She is also a Cinema reviewer and works with RealD 3D reviewing the latest 3D releases and IMAX, she has also had several articles published in various publications including the first edition of SFW Magazine. In 2015 she became an Award Winning Blogger and also has her website listed as one of the UK’s Top 10 Film Blogs.
