Howard’s Mill (2021)

Warning: I’ll have to spoil a bit of a film that’s really made for going into cold.

We are back in POV horror land. This time around the film purports to be a true crime documentary made by – repeat after me – a couple of student filmmakers. I deeply appreciate the lack of the annoying tech or sound guy trope character among them.

On a couple’s detectorist outing on some farmland near Springfield, Kentucky, Emily Nixon (Shira Lacy) goes missing very suddenly and rather inexplicably. After some time, husband Dwight (Reegus Flenory) comes under some suspicion by the police, but there’s really very little evidence for foul play from his side, however much the cop on the job would like it to be.

Dwight isn’t terribly satisfied with the police work, so he and the filmmakers start digging into the case on their own. For a basically empty patch of land close to a farm, there has been a curiously large amount of sudden disappearances over the years in a very small area, and soon enough, our intrepid investigators go down a rabbit hole of curious circumstances, creepy and deeply suspicious happenings, and tales of people going missing only to return ten years later.

There’s an additional cool bit to that last part I am not going to spoil any further than to add that I admire how cleverly director Shannon Houchins uses a classically weird trope here, combined with a very traditional folkloric concept, without ever actually using the word that concept suggests. It’s all very fortean in a delightfully underplayed way.

Another of Howard’s Mill’s strengths is its strong sense of the local. This was really shot on locations in the actual Springfield – I assume with local talent professional and amateur – so there is a strong sense of place and authenticity (as well as the proper accents) running through proceedings. This sort of thing always enhances the qualities of a horror movie in my eyes. Particularly, of course, when a movie is made in a style that’s all about at least the appearance of authenticity.

There are some lovely, moody landscape shots here, and the there’s a sense of the rural and US Southern that does feel natural, as well as unnatural when a big of gothic dread is needed.

Houchins does make a pretty good go of imitating the form of a cheap true crime documentary, and there’s a neat sense of progression to the protagonists’ investigations, where interesting revelations are spaced out just right. And thanks to the documentary style, there aren’t any of the scenes of nothing of relevance or interest happening that haunt POV horror as a whole.

Given the Fortean elements, that bit I don’t want to spoil, as well as its emphasis on the local, Howard’s Mill is a film pretty much made for my specific tastes, but even if you’re not its absolute core audience, its quietly confident filmmaking and its low-key sense of something inexplicable haunting a perfectly unassuming locale should make for a clear recommendation.