The latest by Gareth Evans is a major departure from the high-octane martial arts films The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2. Non-stop action is traded for a cult thriller that builds into an explosive brutal horror filled third act (our review), and it’s releasing exclusively on Netflix on October 12. Set in 1905, Apostle stars Dan Stevens as Thomas Richardson, a man sent to the remote island of Erisden to rescue his sister after she’s kidnapped by a mysterious cult demanding a large ransom for her return. As Thomas digs deeper into the secrets of the island, the cult may soon regret ever involving his family.

At its core, Apostle is a new entry in folk horror. Though Evans has made a name in action, he was interested in exploring new territory, “I moved back to Wales and I knew I wanted to make something different. I wanted to make something that wasn’t The Raid 3, much to the chagrin of a lot of people. They keep telling me to make The Raid 3, which is lovely. It’s so nice and very humbling, but I wanted to do something different. And I really wanted to do horror because I had the taste for it when we did “Safe Haven” for V/H/S 2, which is a blast to co-direct on that.”

When asked about the film’s influences, Evans explains, “Folk horror was a major influence. Before we started writing, I started re-watching a bunch of films and things I’d seen in the past, things I’d never seen before. It was re-watching The Wicker Man. It was also re-watching The Witchfinder General. And it was watching Ken Russell’s, The Devils, which blew me away because I had never seen it before. It wasn’t about the extremity of what that film has. There was a subtext to it. I was kind of blown away by that. But then also more into the modern stuff. Jumping into things like Ben Wheatley’s films like Kill List and A Field in England. For me it was looking at the aesthetics of those films. There’s just something about the atmosphere in them, where it’s like there’s enough that’s grounded in reality. But then, a behavior of a character would be just so slightly askew that you feel like you wobble with it. And it’s just something about things coming from the left or the right which kind of throw you and you start to feel unsettled. And that’s what I wanted to try to find in this film.”

Outside of tonal research, Evans did extensive research when it came to the creation of the cult’s brutal forms of torture and punishment. In Apostle, Evans gets up close and personal with the pain inflicted upon his characters and delivers a visceral, unflinching experience by way of some very unique machinery. When asked about these devices he explains, “I did some research into medieval forms of capital punishment and stuff like that. Some of that stuff was unreal. It was just unbearable to read up on. It’s a weird thing. What made it strikingly different from what I’ve done in the past was this. Whenever we have a set piece in like The Raid or The Raid 2, it was about getting the audience along for the visceral ride of it. But in Apostle, when it came to the torture machines, it has to hurt. As in, it has to hurt emotionally what you’re going through.”

As for lead protagonist Thomas Richardson, Stevens plays a very different character than his character in genre favorite The Guest, though it was this film that put Stevens at the forefront of Evan’s mind when creating the character. “Dan, when he was in The Guest, I met him and I thought, ‘This guy is so charismatic. He’s so charming.’ But I didn’t want Dan from The Guest in this film. And that’s the only thing because a lot of the anticipation has been, ‘Oh, it’s Dan Stevens from The Guest. That director was from The Raid. And he’s going to go into this place and storm this place.’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ The version we’re going to do is that Dan’s character thinks that he’s [Humphrey] Bogart. And he thinks he’s going to go in there all cool and everything else. But the fact is, really, he’s dependent on laudanum. He’s not very skilled as a fighter, but he survives. And he can endure. But he’s still not Bogart. In order for him to succeed, he’s going to have to endure an awful lot of punishment. And Dan was really gracious in that respect because he was willing to dirty down and not be the hero version of this film.”

Evans has a few projects in the works, namely a mystery actioner titled Blister, that sees his return to action. Which begged the question of whether Apostle marked Evans only foray into horror. He smiled and answered, “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve got horror completely out of my system.” We’re glad to hear it.