Film review: The eeriness in Enys Men is echoed by a superb soundscape

Enys Men (15A) stars Mary Woodvine as The Volunteer. Pictures: Steve Tanner 

★★★★☆

Set in 1973, on a small island off the coast of Cornwall, Enys Men (15A) stars Mary Woodvine as The Volunteer, whose job on the otherwise uninhabited island is to observe a rare wildflower growing on the edge of a sheer cliff.

At least, the island is supposed to be uninhabited — gradually, however, we start to realise that the solitary botanist has become something of a lightning rod for the ghosts of sailors who lost their lives in a tragedy on the rugged Cornish coast.

Is she simply imagining it? And what if she isn’t, and the ghosts are trying to warn her of another, imminent tragedy?

Mary Woodvine is terrific in what is effectively a one-woman show Pictures: Steve Tanner 

Written and directed by Mark Jenkin ( Bait), Enys Men is a film steeped in loss and grief that emphasises its 1970s setting (Jenkin employs grainy film and the occasional eruption of screen ‘flares’) to assert a kinship with unsettling folk horrors such as The Wicker Man.

Mary Woodvine is terrific in what is effectively a one-woman show; The Volunteer’s sense of alienation is the one constant in a story in which time and space seem to expand and contract, creating a disorientating and sinister sense of coming unmoored that emphasises the botanist’s dislocation from reality, the eeriness of which is echoed by a superb soundscape composed by Jenkin himself.

In cinemas January 13.