Dogged, You Can't Go Home Again

Thomas Wolfe penned "You can't go home again." This brings us to Rule #11 on the top ten list of things we learn not to do after watching horror films. IF YOU GET OUT OF A CREEPY TOWN...DON'T GO BACK! Nostalgia, homesickness, and perhaps an old love do draw us back home years after we have left.  The years that go by help us forget the reasons we left. Hence the fate of a likable bloke in Richard Rowntree's "Dogged."

He's ambitious and his own man. Young Sam (Sam Saunders) left the island he grew up in to go to university, eschewing unspoken tradition. No one is supposed to leave. Time honored traditions protect and nurture the good people of Farthing Island. Uh oh, Sam is drawn back because of the mysterious death of a young pretty teen...and his crush on the Reverend Jones' (Toby Wynn Davies) daughter, Rachel (Aiysha Jebali). Reverend Jones seems to be the unofficial mayor of the island.  He looks as if he could take a confession from you in the morning and perform a ritualistic sacrificial rite on your kids in the evening.  Sam's return is unsettling for the residents, especially for his parents who he shamed by leaving.

Sam begins to ask questions about the death of the young teen. Bad move! An obvious cover-up is occurring. Meanwhile, as a secret to no one, he engages in pre-marital sex with Rachel.  Sam draws lots of scrutiny from mysterious figures wearing animal masks...never a good sign. Sam meets some horrified hippies and an apparently insane woodsman who try to warn him, but they are too ambiguous for Sam to understand. As Reverend Jones, a man with bloody secrets, finds out his dear daughter has been defiled by a university boy, he decides on a course of action which will have Sam in his cross hairs. The animal masked cultists get bolder, and Sam develops an ally, a weird hippie woman (Nadia Lamin). He better act fast as the cultists are now tasked and Rachel has been "chosen" for something.

I know what you're thinking..."The Wicker Man." The similarities are indeed there but be warned the ending is more involved and ominous.  One may argue that the social commentary in this Richard Rowntree folk-horror flick is even more biting than "The Wicker Man." Will Reverend Jones be as successful as Christopher Lee was in the aforementioned film? Is young Sam majoring in anything that could be remotely useful to him in evading a malignant cult?  "Dogged" will leave you stunned and rethinking your desire to visit the islands of the United Kingdom.  For a horrific journey in which modern progress is tormented by ancient tradition...see "Dogged."