Lore: Film Review

Gather around, get warm, and settle in, this is going to be one heck of a twisted story. ‘Lore’ (2023) is a unique horror film, in that it is both creative and new but just as much, it isn’t. With a stereotypical main plot essentially following four friends, looking to hike through spooky woodlands with the aid of an old, creepy man called Darwin; played by Richard Brake (3 from hell and Barbarian). I say ‘the main plot’ as the film is dissected into five subplots, each with 20 minutes or so of screen time.

Essentially, the initial four characters are invited to sit around a campfire by the sinister aid and asked to share tales of horror and fear to feed the spirits that dwell within the woods surrounding them. The film then becomes a collection of nightmare-fuelled storylines under the guise of your cliched campfire tall tales of ghosts and goblins told by kids at camp. This is where the film may split audiences with each story being reminiscent of the childlike stories you might tell other kids to scare them late at night (with some being more graphic than others) and in nature rather obvious and slightly disjointed at times.

The genius (intentional or otherwise) is that the storylines are, at times, laugh-out-loud funny due to their on-the-nose outcomes or twists that even a 12-year-old could probably see coming. But fortunately, the reminder that we, as an audience get between each story, is that these short stories are being told by friends, who are intent on amplifying aspects of shock and surprise, almost to a comedic degree.

Had these short stories been told independently of one another, they would have worked fine, but their obviousness and their cheeky charm would have probably come across as weird and ill-placed without the interwoven plot holding them together.

Something not apparent, until the credits roll, is that each sub-story has been written by a different writer. Looking back that is rather apparent, with each plot having a different tone and style, with genres clashing based on each person’s interpretation of what truly scares them.

The film star Richard Brake, Andrew Lee Potts, Bill Fellows, Rufus Hound and a list of actors too long to recount, with no one being any better or worse than the other, all culminating in a well-acted hour and a half. Again, how the story progresses allows the acting to be farcical at times, almost like a mate saying, “And then he turned around and said this”. Whether this was by design or pure coincidence is hard to say for sure, but it works better than you’d think.

Production value is there, and the camera work is better than most in this genre, showing just as much as you need to keep you drawn in, whilst still leaving you guessing. The final story in particular had me gleefully gasping at the shocking quality of detail shown on screen, for what I expected to be more of an ‘off-screen’ kind of B movie.

Fans of tongue-in-cheek horror and short storytelling will surely enjoy each minute. Not quite the quality of horror you’d get from the VHS franchise (2012 – 2024) or the stardom we’ve seen in Ghost Stories (2017) but still a good night of fun to enjoy with friends; just not quite hot enough though to toast marshmallows on.

A  love letter to classic horror, Lore is premiering exclusively on the Icon Film Channel from 26th August, sign up for a 7-day free trial at iconfilmchannel.uk or via the Icon Film Channel on Amazon Prime. Lore will be available to stream exclusively on the IFC Channel from 26 August, in Select UK Cinemas from 27 September and then available on Home Entertainment from 21 October 2024.