Even without having read Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel, I can almost say with certainty that Daniel Kokotajlo’s film aligns its thematic course with that of the book. That’s why there’s so little on-the-nose elucidation about the mythology that ensnares the family in Starve Acre. And giving us so much to read between the lines and the imagery is what adds to the anxiety Kokotajlo’s film wants us to feel about the uncertainty of, well, everything.
Spoiler Alert
What happens in the film?
Something must’ve happened with Owen for Richard and Juliette to have given Yorkshire country life a chance. It’s never just about the fresh air and the open expanses, is it? But Starve Acre is reluctant to inspect the reason behind the move. And we’re actually two years into Richard and Juliette’s life at Starve Acre, the estate and the country house Richard grew up in and inherited from his peculiarly abusive dad, Neil. It’s actually one of Neil’s ominously hopeful poems that gets us nice and creeped out before we get into the film. So there’s never any doubt that Richard’s past will have something to do with the fact that Owen claims to hear the eerie whistlings of an enigmatic Jack Grey, someone Neil’s “The Dandelion” was practically a love letter to. Juliette’s understandably terrified by the idea of a voice in Owen’s head that marionettes the sweet little boy and makes him do ghastly things like jamming a stick in a pony’s eye at the fair. Their neighbor Gordon, the man who looks after Owen when his parents have their hands full, is accused of stuffing superstitious nonsense into Owen’s head. But Richard and Juliette don’t get to find out if the treatment under Dr. Monk and keeping him away from Gordon would’ve worked. Owen dies of an asthma attack. And as you would’ve guessed, Richard and Juliette’s lives fall apart.
What is the mystery of the oak tree?
The oak tree came up in Starve Acre before Owen’s passing. Owen’s curiosity about the place and the myths tied to it was fairly easy for Richard to handle, seeing as he was an archaeologist, and unearthing and analyzing the history of places was something he was darn good at. And having spent his own childhood at Starve Acre, Richard knew all about the oak tree that was cut down and still had its roots in the ground. To Owen though, that oak tree was connected to deaths and sacrifices meant for pagan gods. Richard didn’t accuse Gordon of filling his head up with this lore for nothing. This wasn’t the first time Richard had heard of this Jack Grey. To Richard, Jack Grey was a boogeyman created by his father to torment him, and Gordon used to take part in the bullying too. His father was so abusive that Richard could never look beyond the pain he felt. The horror was tangible in the ways Neil hurt Richard. So he never needed to wonder if the scary stories about Starve Acre were real. But just like Owen, Richard’s father actually believed in Jack Grey. And when Richard says that Jack Grey is a wood sprite, Starve Acre lays the mysterious boogeyman’s identity bare.
In folklore, wood sprites are fairies connected to oak and hawthorn trees. So this Jack Grey being the mystical spirit tied to the oak tree in Starve Acre makes all the sense in the world. There’s a lot more about the oak tree that’s in Neil’s documentation of Starve Acre and its lore-rich grounds. To Richard, the tree was a meeting spot for the villagers. But to Neil, the tree was the entrance to the spirit world, which demanded sacrifices in exchange for joy and abundance. It’s actually pretty similar to how the Slavic people used to see oak trees. To them, an oak tree had its branches in heaven, its trunk in the world, and its roots in the underworld. In Starve Acre‘s ending, when Richard and his colleague Steven dig the ground to find the tree, the state of it corroborates Neil’s understanding of it. It’s strange enough that the trunk and the roots are buried underground. But it would’ve been impossible for it to have shown no signs of rotting if it wasn’t a gateway to the underworld. And that brings me to the dandelions, synonymous with the devil in the film. Mythology connects dandelions with the underworld goddess Hecate, and considering Hecate’s association with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and fertility, the yellow flowers in the film are a sign of the lands’ fertility. That was the entire point of the pagans worshipping and sacrificing people to these ancient gods. They did it for the reward of Spring blessing their lands with an abundance of crops–enough for them to survive the brutal winter.
What is the significance of the hare?
However much the unforeseen nature of the events may fool you, nothing in Starve Acre is actually random. Least of all the hare skeleton Richard digs up some time after burying his son. On the surface, an archeologist unearthing the bones of an animal common in the area doesn’t sound too strange. But the fact that it’s only after Richard brings the hare skeleton home that he starts to look into how deep his dad was into all this is pretty meaningful in itself. He even gets to know that all those times his dad used to strip him down and make him stand outside in the freezing cold until his fingers were blue, he was actually meant to be a sacrifice to Jack Grey. And with his denial thinning out and grief overcoming all his senses, Richard is ripe for supernatural manipulation. So even though it’s puzzling for him when the hare skeleton defies the laws of decomposition, and flesh and organs grow around the bones, Richard isn’t necessarily freaked out by it. He does find it strange enough to bring it to his work for Steven to check out, but the fact that the skeleton is just a skeleton outside of Starve Acre proves that its magic is tied to the land. There’s something else that makes me entertain the idea that the hare’s spirit was at their house way before it actually came into being. Remember Mrs. Forde’s bizarre “meditation” session with a reluctant Juliette and her sister Harrie? After the candle was strangely put out and relit by something supernatural, Juliette touched something invisible right beside her, and whatever was there took a very hare-like leap and knocked over the stack of magazines. It was definitely more of a ritual to bring Juliette on their side than a meditation session to help her process her grief and pain.
Mrs. Forde, clearly a worshipper of Jack Grey, needed Juliette to let go of Owen so she’d have her womb open for something new. Yeah, I’m talking about the hare. When the hare came to life and shocked our archeologist, Juliette was way more loving to it than her husband, who practically watched it undo its death and come alive. It was never supposed to stay out even though they let it free in the woods. It marked Harrie with its attack and came right in to fill the Owen shaped hole in Juliette’s heart. And there she was, with her arms open to embrace the gift of Jack Grey. If you ask me, I think the hare is Jack Grey. Jack Grey gives joy in exchange for sacrifices. And given how in European myths the hare is associated with fertility and is believed to have shape-shifting magic at its disposal, the hare in the film was likely the very deity that they’re supposed to worship. It came to Juliette and Richard after one life was given to it, that of Owen. Celtic myths about the hare also suggest that the hare in Starve Acre is at the center of the whole fiasco. The triskele that’s peppered throughout the film is a Celtic symbol of the cycle of life. The hare, who I believe is Jack Grey, the dandelion, the sign of fertility to Juliette, and the tangible manifestation of the triskele, had the power to turn the cycle of life at its will. Connected with Goddess Eostre, the goddess of the lunar cycle, Spring, rebirth, and fertility, the hare was the sign of prosperity the people around Starve Acre were worshipping. During Starve Acre‘s ending, Juliette and Richard have given in to the pull of their land’s ancient magic and recognized the hare as their child. That’d mean that they’ll continue to cater to it, worship it, and maybe even have more babies to sacrifice to it.
Did Juliette kill Owen?
Coming back to the apparent randomness I was talking about, other than Owen’s death, there’s actually no specific point where the protagonists get sucked into the lore of their land. There’s this sense that it was always there, all around them, and it had them before they even could’ve suspected. When Richard breaks down in Juliette’s arms, his words reveal his most secret vulnerability. Before that, Juliette didn’t quite know the extent of Richard’s dad’s abusive actions. And she also didn’t know that the whole purpose of the move was so that Richard could paint over his painful past with the memories he’d make with Owen. That dream never came true. You also might remember that Richard wasn’t exactly the best husband after Owen’s death. His passive-aggressive insinuations that Juliette didn’t love Owen enough and might’ve had something to do with his death made him sound like a horrible person, honestly.
But in the film’s ending sequence, Juliette comes clean about what really happened to Owen. You might’ve noticed that there was something odd in the air and the surroundings for Juliette and Richard both when Owen fell unconscious. Juliette was almost in a trance-like state as Jack Grey’s influence on everything around Starve Acre took control of her senses. And even Richard felt something strange about the way the air was brushing against the tree just outside the window of his workplace. Initially, it looked like Juliette tried her best to get Owen to the hospital in time. But in the ending sequence, as Juliette acknowledges her desire to become one with the lore of Richard’s estate, we get to know that she waited long enough for Owen to die of the asthma attack before taking him to the hospital. The “sacrifice” became official when Gordon brought in Mrs. Forde. Once Juliette let go of Owen on an emotional and spiritual level, she was gifted with the hare.
You might still wonder why Neil failed to appease the gods. Well, it wasn’t because Jack Grey appreciated the moral superiority of Richard and Juliette. The answer’s actually in what Gordon says to Harrie when she runs into him. Jack Grey is quite picky about the sacrifices he’d accept. It’d always have to be a son who’s truly loved by his father. That way, the sacrifice is all the more valuable. Richard’s dad never loved him, whereas Owen was loved immensely by his dad. But one sacrifice isn’t enough to bring forth the gifts of Spring. In Neil’s research, Harrie and Juliette saw that three sacrifices were needed for the gods to be satiated: a woman, a man, and a child. When Juliette is visited by a supernatural version of Steven, demanding his own death, she recognizes the man with the shovel in Neil’s book as Steven. And as she stabs Steven to death and his blood nourishes the roots of the oak tree, the second sacrifice is complete. By now, Richard had also given in. Gordon reminds him that there have to be three sacrifices for the “dandelion to bud,” and Richard completes the triskele of sacrifices by hitting Harrie with a hammer and killing her. Chanting in the grave of the oak tree, Mrs. Forde is wearing a three hares pendant, which is associated with the Triple Goddess in Celtic Paganism. The Triple Goddess, whose three names symbolize the three stages of the moon (Maiden is the growing phase of the moon, Mother is the full moon, and Crone is the stage of the moon’s waning), signifies the cycle of life and death.
In Starve Acre‘s ending, Richard and Juliette are rewarded with a strange parenthood. Be it grief or how the lore of Starve Acre weaponized it against the couple, by the end of the film, they were living to serve an ancient power they never would’ve taken seriously had it not been for their move to Yorkshire. But who knows, maybe that was a part of the whole scheme too. They don’t get Owen back, but they’re parents to the pagan deity that decides the future of the land and its worshippers.
