OCTOBRRR – Review "The Good Apostle" (Netflix): demonic sect and gore at will

This month, the JustFocus editorial team finds you your Halloween movie: Netflix offers on the occasion of the festival of all horrors a film perfectly in the theme. The good apostle of Gareth Evans (the director of the trilogy The Raid, or the recent The Night Comes for Us) stands out as the highlight of this month of October on Netflix: demonic sect, imprisoned goddess and torture tools of all kinds are at the rendezvous in this joyful bloody and morbid mixture, which will delight fans of the genre.

Without any other form of introduction, The Good Apostle places its characters in a very dark universe: Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens), a vagabond out of nowhere, goes in search of his sister, kidnapped by a cult in exchange for a ransom. He will therefore infiltrate a more than mysterious island, and pretend to be one of the members of this sect that quickly reveals its more than dubious practices. After an easy infiltration, which works miraculously as Thomas' suspicious air is visible from start to finish, he discovers the macabre depths of this island and gets lost in its sinister mazes. 

To the horror is added little by little a fantastic dimension that increasingly fogs a rather obscure scenario, bringing ever more questions to which we will have to make our own answers. The situations are linked irremediably, in a fall to hell unfortunately not very credible, and which struggles to carry us away; Perhaps the fault of this main character too uncharismatic, who seems so tense in his expression that he becomes laughable. Thomas seems to be crossed only by two different feelings, the frown grave and serious, and the eyes wide with fear; a rather bad direction of actors, which is unfortunately found in most of the characters (except perhaps in Michael Sheen). As for the female characters (played by Lucy Boynton and Annes Elwy among others), they result from a cinematic sexism unfortunately too common in this kind of films, and do not bring anything interesting to the film.

The great strength of the Good Apostle is a very beautiful photography and a daring staging, which despite the weaknesses of the scenario manages to lead us into this bloody and morbid universe. The feelings of confinement and the nightmarish dreamlike dimensions speak to our deepest emotions and fears, and the whole develops a very visual horror imagination, which makes the film a very good moment for Halloween. The horror manifests itself slowly, taking the time to sow violence and fear in its path, to hatch striking visceral anxieties.

Where The Good Apostle strikes hard, it is in its atmosphere, in the history of its sect and especially in its captivating staging; but as its two hours unfold, Gareth Evans' film loses its force and its purpose, abandoning too many aspects that could have given the whole a much stronger identity and would have attracted a wider audience. A half-hearted success, therefore, which tends to fall too easily into gratuitous violence, and which turns too quickly from an original idea poorly exploited. A good movie for your Halloween party, but nothing more.

Gareth Evans' The Good Apostle trailer: