Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jude Law, Katherine Waterston, Naomi Harris, Emily Watson, Paddy Considine, Mark Lewis Jones, John Dagleish, Jessie Ross, Richard Bremmer, Freya Allan, Borje Lundberg, Paul Kaye, Nico Parker.
British Folk Horror or the gothic supernatural doesn’t perhaps get the respect it deserves in the 21st Century, few writers will embrace it, and it appears even less people wish to dip their toe into the murky, almost pitch black seas to which the mirroring and observances of the closed community has thrived unabated by the pressures of time, or indeed the interference of the outside world.
We like to think of ourselves inhabiting a place of openness, a town, a large progressive city to which our own sense of enlightenment has been embraced by all, that there is no hiding place for superstition or paranormal, that even reliance on religion is confined to the administering of a faithful message, not peddling misconception of scripture or the false notion of doctrine; yet somehow belief in any community that can be considered cut adrift from the whole will flourish under the guise or the appearance it chooses to be part of.
The Third Day bucks a trend, it also shows a caution of reality when such communities that only have the barest attachment to what could be seen as the mainland are faced with when the vagueness of irrationality seeps in and becomes a powerful force.
As with the excellent and classic film The Wicker Man, The Third Day plays on the fears of the stranger, the unknowing ritual, and whilst it doesn’t quite have the same air of isolationist drama to which Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee demonstrated admirably in the 1973 British film, nor does it quite capture the sheer brutality in the United States/Swedish Folk Horror Midsommar, The Third Day does combine the anxiety to be found when you come across a group of people with their own rules, the manipulation to which the awareness of cult conscious is visited upon, and the perception that they will do anything to stop you leaving, with rather startling truth.
The death of a child is always a catalyst for such twisting of reality, and for Sam, played with intense captivation by Jude Law, the way he finds himself at the centre of a disturbing mystery when he brings back a young girl to the island after she attempts suicide, is enough to frame the point of the genre, enough to remind the viewer that there is more to what we believe, and the shadows in the corners of our eyes are not just cataracts blocking our sight.
With superb performances by Emily Watson, Katherine Waterston and Naomi Harris, The Third Day does much to add to the genre of Folk Horror, the impression of depth, substance and distress captures a small section of the soul and makes it understand just how isolation can be psychologically damaging. A remarkable piece of television.
Ian D. Hall