The Moor
It was a teenage prank, a momentary thrill with a sugar rush to follow, Claire using Danny to distract the shopkeeper while she filled her bag with Opal Fruits and Dib Dabs then ran back to the alley to await his return, except that Danny was never seen again, the corner shop on Hillcrest Mews the last sighting of another child gone missing, another dog eared poster fading through time to become a statistic which can never truly convey the vast ocean of grief it represents.
Twenty five years after “the Summer of Fear,” Claire has returned north to meet up with Danny’s still grieving father Bill; the killer eventually caught and prosecuted for a single abduction out of the many, he refused to cooperate with the police or reveal his involvement in any of the other open cases or the location of the bodies, Bill still hunting the moor for his son a quarter of a century later, seeking closure and evidence to overturn the parole board and keep the killer behind bars for life.
An area bleak and unwelcoming, vast and desolate, as alien and forbidding as the surface of another planet where only the hardiest vegetation clings to the hillsides and floats on the peat bogs which lurk unseen to trip and trap unwary hikers, The Moor keeps its secrets and offers no concessions for human need, Oscar’s Bell director Chris Cronin’s debut feature portraying his home county under a shroud of mist and mystery.
Bill (David Edward-Robertson) an angry and obsessed but normally grounded Yorkshireman, in desperation he has reached out to a diviner who dangles charms over maps and points to Blackholme Edge but the leads are more frustrating than productive, Claire (Sophia La Porta) dubious of both the approach and her involvement with her trek across the moor a guilt trip she is obliged to fulfil, a debt she owes to Bill and Danny which can never be paid, crossing an invisible barrier of apprehension as she steps off the road and into the past.
Abducted children buried in the Yorkshire Moors the spectre which hangs over the film, The Moor is respectful in its approach, asking questions of the handling of the investigation by the police represented by Lord of the Rings’ Bernard Hill but never accusing and with Paul Thomas’ script keeping the incarcerated killer off camera and unnamed, the focus instead on the families and those nearest them, a circle expanded to include Eleanor (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips), a more powerful medium who can sense the secrets beneath the soil but only at a cost.
The eerie spaces of Picnic at Hanging Rock filtered through the faded colours of the decayed VHS recordings which form the opening titles, The Moor is as sparse and unforgiving as The Blair Witch Project in the cumulative dread as each trip back becomes more emotionally distressing and physically dangerous, a dark and disorienting place where the only markers of civilisation are Neolithic rock carvings and the watching sheep tell no tales of what they might have witnessed.
FrightFest has now concluded and The Moor is playing the festival circuit
