Shifting his energies to a Victorian-era island blood cult hasn't dimmed Evans' taste for feverish body harm, but it's more clearly laid bare his narrative shortcomings.
Alas, everything here is muted build-up with little pay-off. Psychological realism is abandoned. Characters switch loyalties and temperaments for no reason.
Feels like a mash-up of 2015's arthouse chiller The Witch and 1973's original The Wicker Man, without being as engagingly creepy as either one of those movies.
Much like the cult it depicts, Apostle has a lot of powerful forces at its disposal, but can't seem to marshal those forces well enough to define its goals, much less achieve them.
