Widows running farms and the like in remote locations are never up to any good.
In Simon M. Valentine’s short Tistlebu, we meet a young idyllic couple, looking to spend some time in the great outdoors, on the land of a recently widowed farm owner. In exchange, they must look after a strange-looking entity in the farmhouse.
Coined a tursemorkel, a tree-trunk like shape, it also seeps a white substance, which should immediately send alarm bells ringing.
On the surface, the couple appears quite happy, but after spending time with the tursemorkel, the girl Sanna becomes distant whilst the boy, Karl gets horny.
When it is his turn to tend to the tursemorkel he makes the mistake of tasting its white residue, and things get stranger from here on out.
Valentine’s film is a slow-burn folk horror at its best, with a minimalist score which broods with an overarching dread permeating every frame.
The message of Tistlebu is that nature can be terribly ugly, but is it because man has invaded it?
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