White Settlers

This rural ‘home invasion’ movie is gussied up with topical nods to the Scottish independence debate – but horror fans on both sides of the border are likely to vote no. ‘White Settlers’ pits an English incomer couple against a group of pig mask-wearing locals, who take axe-wielding umbrage at their presence. Having moved into the isolated Castle Farm, the site of a fierce historic battle between the English and the Scots, Sarah (Pollyanna McIntosh) and her smug city boy husband Ed (Lee Williams) are terrorised by the dead ex-owner’s sons, whose family home was repossessed by the bank.

Director Simeon Halligan and cinematographer James Swift capture the wild beauty of the Scottish borders, but the set-up is too slow, the plot is over-stretched, the twists are predictable and the ending is a credibility-defying damp squib. Meanwhile, McIntosh and Williams struggle to wring some tension and emotional involvement out of writer Ian Fenton’s under-developed characters and over-familiar situations. Kudos, though, to Joanne Mitchell, whose performance as a politely disapproving estate agent is an all too brief highlight.