Stake Land

The darling of Edinburgh’s Dead by Dawn horror festival, Jim Mickle’s Stake Land is well worth hunting down. A young boy, Martin (Connor Paolo), and a grizzled drifter, known only as Mister (Nick Damici), make their way through a post-apocalyptic America inhabited by religious zealots and legions of bloodthirsty monsters, which seem to be brutal hybrids of vampires and zombies.

It could easily have descended into pulp nonsense, but the unmistakable influence of John Hillcoat’s The Road anchors the film and gives it a gritty sense of reality that elevates it above its blood-sucker competition.

Mickle wisely takes the time to create characters we care about and gets fine performances from an excellent cast which includes Halloween (2007) alumnus Danielle Harris and Top Gun’s Kelly McGillis. He also breaks a few long-established genre rules, throwing our sense of safety right out the window.

Forget what you think you know about horror. This one’s a game-changer.