Hen – Ravenously hungry and quietly evil

From the very first shot that lights up the screen, the tone of Hen is unsettling. Dawid (Stian Bam) is busy drawing water from a well. The camera looks up from inside the well at Dawid as he removes the planks one by one to reach the water. The black-and-white imagery is not only stripped of colour, but it also exposes a raw malevolence as this story from the pen of Nico Scheepers begins to find its rhythm.

Dawid and Hanna (Amalia Uys) find themselves in what appears to be the late nineteenth century, on a desolate farm where their faith is the only anchor against an unyielding landscape filled with dust, silence, and loneliness. Like the emptiness surrounding them, the dialogue in Hen is sparse because the images speak louder—and by the end, they scream. On one of Dawid’s trips to the well, he comes across a gruesome scene: five people lie torn apart under a tree. Jackals? Dawid wonders, but this makes no sense. In the middle of the bodies stands a coffin, and inside it Dawid finds a frightened, starving child.

Dawid decides to take Lukas—portrayed with masterful subtlety by newcomer Dawian van der Westhuizen—back to the farm. It is then that a dark shadow begins to move across the mountains and plains, and over Dawid and Hanna themselves.