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United Kingdom · 2021
1h 43m
Director Russell Owen
Starring Tom Hughes, Kate Dickie, Gaia Weiss, Greta Scacchi
Genre Horror
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Widower Eric Black contemplates suicide after the suspicious death of his wife. However, he’s distracted by an advertisement for a shepherd on a remote, desolate island off the west coast of Scotland. Eric takes the opportunity to run away from his troubles and reflect. But soon, his wind-swept escape turns into a terrifying, unescapable nightmare.
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
Ratcheting up the conflict and confusion becomes counter-intuitive, the escalation of violence and brutality arriving without clear motive. I can’t even decide for myself what’s happening—there’s nothing but smoke to grab. Owen stripped away the film’s own agency.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
With Shepherd, the Welsh writer and director Russell Owen shows us how to accrue a great deal of atmosphere with very little fuss.
Shepherd is more of a bandwagon-jumping exercise in arthouse horror films about grief than a truly bone-chilling example of one.
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
While the plot here is thin (and slow-paced, and oppressively grim), Owen has a remarkable facility for generating atmosphere. He’s made a film where one man’s internal strife has been effectively externalized as an inescapable, picturesque purgatory.
A young boy grows up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the late 1960s.