Movie Review: THE SEVERED SUN

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 16th, 2025 / 02:33 AM

THE SEVERED SUN movie poster | ©2025 Dark Sky Films

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Emma Appleton, Toby Stephens, Jodhi May, Lewis Gribben, Barney Harris, Oliver Maltman, Flora Lambert, Eoin Slattery, Zachary Tanner, James Swanton
Writer: Dean Puckett
Director: Dean Puckett
Distributor: Dark Sky Films
Release Date: May 16, 2025

Director/writer Dean Puckett creates such a potent sense of atmosphere throughout THE SEVERED SUN that we keep waiting for it to become more than it does.

At the outset, a young woman – we will shortly discover this is Margaret, called Magpie (Emma Appleton) – narrates a brief fable about how the lonely moon created the sun as a lover, leaving a lonely bastard child in the shadows.

Then we are in a kitchen with greenery tied to the ceiling. Magpie is here with David (Lewis Gribben), who we will eventually understand is her stepson, and Sam (Zachary Tanner), Magpie’s son with husband Howard (Eoin Slattery).

In voiceover, Magpie tells us that she is poisoning Howard. She then lures him out to the woods so that she can make his death look like an accident. While she’s out there, Magpie sees a horned demon (James Swanton).

The Pastor (Toby Stephens) in this rural village speaks to his flock outdoors. He is Magpie’s father, and not happy that she hasn’t come to church services lately, although he is giving her some time to get over her grief at losing her husband.

It’s clear the Pastor rules this community through religion-inspired fear. Women should want to bear children and put up with battery and worse from their husbands. Magpie doesn’t respect her father’s authority as either parent or cleric.

The Pastor, for his part, doesn’t believe it when one of his devout followers, Andrea (Jodhi May), accuses Magpie of summoning the demon, but it suits his purposes to act like he’s considering her story.

We’re never quite sure what era we’re in. The Pastor speaks of something that sounds like an apocalypse that has happened a little while back, in the time that “the elders” remember.

Since we don’t hear of any other settlements, and since nobody seems to feel like they can go somewhere else, this seems more likely than that we’re just looking at an isolated sect of past or present.

But more is not made of this. Likewise, there are vague references to an environmental disaster, but the woods and fields look healthy enough. And for a group worried about the crops, it seems counterintuitive for them to use punish a person by pelting them with perfectly edible vegetables.

There are other questions raised but not addressed throughout. Appleton makes us believe in Magpie’s fear, power, and defiance. Stephens has the power of a charismatic con man as the Pastor. May gives depth to Andrea’s fear and rage. Barney Harris registers sorrowful ambivalence as one of the Pastor’s most devoted disciples. The demon looks so alarmingly unworldly that it’s somewhat surprising to learn that there’s a human performer involved.

While we can be thankful that filmmaker Puckett doesn’t want to bog us down with exposition, he winds up going too far in the other direction. Revelations are made about things we haven’t seen earlier, while things we have seen go unexplained. We wind up spending so much time trying to tie information together that it pulls us out of the moment.

THE SEVERED SUN is artful, but it is too hazy to be wholly satisfying.

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