‘Interest is off the scale’: Cornish cinema fans snub Avatar for local folk horror

Mark Jenkin’s unsettling Enys Men, follow-up to his cult movie Bait, plays to packed-out houses before nationwide launch

Cinema fans in the Cornish town of Bodmin had three options: the behemoths of Avatar and I Wanna Dance With Somebody – or a mind-bending folk horror shot down the road on 16mm film with a tiny budget that would make most Hollywood directors shudder.

By a considerable margin, for this one night at least, the patrons of the Capitol shunned James Cameron and Whitney Houston in favour of the latter, Enys Men, an unsettling, time-slipping movie that tackles big themes – loneliness, grief, fear – belying the modesty of its production.