My Thoughts on the Severed Sun
The Severed Sun is a moody, atmospheric film, and completely uninterested in delivering anything resembling a conventional scare. And I loved it for that.
It’s isn't perfect. It stumbles at times, but when it works, it’s smart, unsettling, and deeply committed to its vision, and most importantly, it haunts you without ever needing to raise its voice. That’s something I really value in horror: restraint.
From the opening shot, The Severed Sun breathes dread like it’s the only air left. It doesn’t lean on cheap tricks. No early stingers or jarring score cues to tell you you’re supposed to be scared. Instead, it sits with things, and lingers. The camera drifts and then pauses just a beat too long. There’s a stillness to it that becomes suffocating in all the right ways. Director Dean Puckett seems to understand that horror isn’t always about what’s in the shadows, it’s about how long you’re willing to sit in the dark.
The film looks really good, too, and we get long, brooding takes of mossy trees, fog-drenched fields, and crumbling interiors. At one point, there’s a sequence shot in infrared, and I swear I physically recoiled. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen that technique used in a way that’s not just stylish, but quite disorienting.
But the true anchor here is Emma Appleton, who plays Magpie. She doesn’t carry the film so much as she grounds it. Her performance is raw without being showy. There’s no melodrama, and no over-explaining of trauma. You just watch this woman slowly unravel under the weight of fear, isolation, and inherited pressure as she frays in silence. You believe every flicker of unease in her eyes because she’s not playing at horror, she’s surviving it.
The Severed Sun is folk horror, yes, but it’s doing something more contemporary with the familiar tropes of the genre. This isn’t about witches in the woods. It’s about the mechanisms of control, how fear is inherited and weaponized, and how trauma lives in the quiet things people never say. If The Witch is about religious paranoia and Midsommar about cultural dissonance, then The Severed Sun is about what happens when you don’t realize you’ve been complicit all along.
That said, it’s definitely not going to work for everyone. It is slow. Deliberately, punishingly slow in parts. And while I usually appreciate a good slow burn, there were moments, especially in the second act, where even I felt it was dragging its feet a little too much.
The tension, while effective early on, plateaus briefly before ramping up again toward the climax. If you’re not fully bought into the film’s rhythm, it’s easy to start clock-watching, wondering when the next real escalation will come. Spoiler: it never really does in the traditional sense.
What the film gives you instead is metaphorical horror. It showcases fear, repression, generational trauma, and I personally love that kind of allegorical storytelling, but I get why some people might not. There’s no cathartic confrontation. No revelation that ties everything up. Just a slow, inevitable unraveling.
The ambiguity, too, is a double-edged sword. I’m someone who loves when films leave questions unanswered, but The Severed Sun might take it a little too far. There are moments where the narrative feels more cryptic than complex, like the film isn’t so much challenging you to interpret it, but just… refusing to clarify anything. It’s a bold choice, and I respect it, but I can’t deny it feels a bit like creative hedging at times. You’ll either lean into the mystery or feel locked out of the story entirely.
But even when the film falters, it falters with intent. The film quietly dissects the allure of cult dynamics, the seductive comfort of dogma, and the paralysis that comes with real freedom. The horror isn’t about being trapped, it’s about what happens when the walls fall away and you have to face the mess that’s been there all along. It’s bleak, sobering stuff, and honestly kind of refreshing in a genre that too often plays it safe with big scares and tidy arcs.
The sound design is another big plus. It’s subtle but razor-sharp. You get these long stretches of quiet punctuated by small, unnerving noises, such as a creak, or a breath, a gust of wind that sounds just wrong enough. It builds this low-level unease that buzzes beneath every scene. By the time you get to the final act, your nerves are already frayed, and that’s before the film delivers one of the most beautifully grim endings I’ve seen all year.
If you’re someone who loves horror that just sits with you, and that seeps into your skin and makes you squirm a little after the credits roll, this film’s going to hit you in all the right places. If you need narrative resolution, quick pacing, or a visible threat to latch onto, you’re probably going to walk away frustrated. And that’s fine. Not all horror is made for everyone.
But for me? I loved it. The Severed Sun trusts its audience, and a film that’s willing to be quiet, difficult, and strange. It understands that fear doesn’t have to be loud to be effective. Sometimes it just has to be true. And in that regard, this one delivers something rare. Horror that doesn't just linger, but stays with you.