Gareth Evans’ Netflix debut Apostle takes us on a twisted and intriguing journey that really seems to take it’s dark and very unsettling themes to heart.
Clocking in at just over two hours, Apostle draws you in slowly with a brooding uncomfortable atmosphere with what at first appears to be a fairly simple run of the mill premise, but as we journey through the second and then third act, the film seems to descend into a sea of unhinged madness.
Apostle finds our main character played admirably to perfection by Dan Stevens travelling to an island owned by a small cult-like community to rescue his sister who has been kidnapped, which is really all that should be known before going into this film.
I wasn’t quite prepared for how dark this film was going to be, there is also a fair amount of uncompromising gore at points so be warned if you are sensitive to that kind of imagery (and sound). That being said I think that it works very well in Apostle and suits to progression of the film.
Everything about Apostle is almost completely engrossing in a way and it always keeps an air of mystery about it. Direction by Gareth Evans is great here, specifically when the intensity is ramped up to 11 and the camerawork feels very fluid and energetic during these moments.
I’d probably best compare the progression to darkness to the way The Witch is structured but at a longer time scale.
With a great Dan Stevens performance and a truly dark uncompromising vision Apostle does a lot of things right and most definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it certainly connected with me and I highly recommend checking it out when it comes to Netflix this Friday.
Thanks to Netflix for providing me with a screener for review.
