This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, films like this one wouldn’t exist.

Directed by Chris Cronin. Written by Paul Thomas

A small town is still shaken twenty five years on by the disappearances of children and the serial killer allegedly involved. As an adult, Claire (Sophia La Porta) too remains traumatised by the vanishing of her childhood best-friend Danny, but returns to her hometown to aid in the ongoing search for his body by his still persistent father Bill (David Edward-Robertson). With the help of a ranger and a father-daughter clairvoyant team, Claire and Bill search the moors where they believe the boy’s final resting place to be.

Initially beginning as a true-crime inflected examination of survivor’s guilt, Claire is seen to be constantly suffering from the fact that she was present at Danny’s disappearance. As the film progresses however audiences soon learn that it is not just Claire that is haunted: the town, its inhabitants and the landscape are also deeply saturated with ghosts. From the headstrong and optimistic Bill (played with an aura of devastating sadness by the brilliant Edward-Robertson), to the police detective (Bernard Hill) who is plagued by a lack of closure, the characters are shells of themselves, eviscerated by the crimes inflicted on this close-knit community. 

As the title suggests though the moor itself is the main character: brooding, unpredictable and seeped in dangerous secrets, it has absorbed the evil carried out upon its soil. The most disconcerting scenes occur here, and – with hold-your-breath tension – Cronin creates an atmosphere that wholly immerses the audience in terror.

With DNA descended from The Blair Witch Project (1999) and the feel of British folk horror The Borderlands (2013), The Moor is an eerie, atmospheric chiller drenched in dread.

© Ygraine Hackett-Cantabrana

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