Welsh director Gareth Evans is best known to cult movie fans as the man behind the 2011 Indonesian action movie The Raid: Redemption and its 2014 sequel The Raid 2. These thrilling, violent, and incredibly-choreographed martial arts epics made much of what passes for Hollywood action seem anaemic in comparison and marked Evans out as one of modern cinema`s most exciting new talents. Evan`s latest movie is Apostle, a Netflix Original which seems him move from martial arts madness into dark horror territory.While this might seem like a left-turn for Evans, anyone who saw Safe Haven, his co-directed item into the 2013 anthology film V/H/S 2 will know that he has serious horror chops too. Apostle is set in 1905, and stars Legion`s Dan Stevens as Thomas Richardson, a man with a mysterious past who is dispatched by his wealthy family to the fictional island of Erisden, several miles off the British coast. His sister Jennifer has been seemingly kidnapped by a religious cult who have set up home on the island and is being held there for ransom. Richardson enters the community undercover, and attempts to discover what has happened to Jennifer.Apostle is very much a movie of two halves. The first plays out more like a spooky mystery than a straight horror movie, as Richardson becomes part of this deeply religious society. The movie takes its time in introducing the main characters--there`s Malcolm (Michael Sheen), the wild-eyed leader of the cult, his daughter Andrea (Lucy Boynton), Quinn (Mark Lewis Jones, Malcolm`s thuggish right-hand man, and a pair of young lovers, whose secret affair will ultimately have terrible consequences for the whole community. For the most part, we see events unfold through Richardson`s eyes as he starts to plan his sister`s rescue.But while the the true horror of Apostle doesn`t unfold for some time, Evans makes it clear early on that something is very wrong on Erisden. Why must the new arrivals all leave a jar of their own blood outside thei ...
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