APOSTLE **

Torture porn from Gareth Evans, the man who gave us "The Raid" and its sequel. "Apostle" certainly scores top marks both for weirdness and extreme nastiness and with its island setting and strange religious cult it should remind you of "The Wicker Man" but that's really where the similarities end. This is a much darker chiller as Dan Stevens heads off to rescue his sister who has been kidnapped by cult leader Michael Sheen only to find that things are even worse than he imagined. Apart from the excessive gore Evans over-eggs the pudding in terms of plot so it isn't always that easy to follow and it isn't helped by Stevens' grim performance. On the other hand, Sheen has a field day as one of the bad guys and it certainly looks great. At 130 minutes it's a tad on the long side but it's certainly not lacking in imagination and I can see cult status beckoning.