Hypothesis: ‘Apostle’ – Dan Stevens Dies, But Looks Very Handsome Doing So

Once more into the breach, dear friends, only this time the movie might be amazing. This week, I watched the trailer for Apostle, about which a word of clarification might be warranted, for anyone potentially following along at home. Under no circumstances should an article be attached to this title. It is but one word. It turns out that The Apostle is a wholly different movie, with 100 percent more Robert Duvall and a terrible lack of Dan Stevens. It may be fine! But it’s not the incredibly strange and deeply violent pathway we’re going down this week.

So. Apostle appears (say that ten times fast) to be about professional handsome man, Dan Stevens, being what I’m assuming is a disgraced preacher, being sent to a remote Scottish village to look for his missing sister. I’m not going to lie to you, friends. Things are looking pretty culty. And not in the friendly, won’t you join our nice cult, here’s some Kool-Aid kind of way. More in the get off my grass or I’ll loose the dogs fashion. It’s pretty clear that Stevens is going to run afoul of them and their leader, an uncustomarily devious Michael Sheen. I’m assuming we’re going at least partial Wicker Man here, and that Dan’s sister either has been or will be the sacrifice that brings about a good harvest.

Here’s what I would like it to be: she’s actually a detective and she has infiltrated the cult and is working to take it down from the inside. She has to stay undercover and avoid Dan, because he threatens to compromise all of the work she has done. The real variable here, and certainly the most interesting in some ways, is whether or not the cult turns Dan into a true believer. It surely appears they beat the ever loving snot out of him. The trailer promises bloody menace, hurray, and it does look like a lot of it is wreaked pretty specifically on poor Dan. Punishment, one assumes, for features far too symmetrical. I’m pretty sure he’s going to die. Nope. I’m positive. I haven’t been this certain of anything in a movie since that time I was sure the French porn director lady did it in Knife+Heart. The fact that I ended up being incorrect in that assertion has not shook my confidence as deeply as you might suspect. Dan Stevens dies in this movie. If I am right, I will reward myself with one beer. If I am wrong I will console myself with one beer. This seems like a fair arrangement.

So my official guess is: when Stevens gets to the cult, they are hostile first, then try to bring them into their fold, because he is very handsome, and then beat him up when he refuses – because after all, these are the weirdos who sacrificed his sister for a good harvest – and then eventually he burns down a sacred temple or something like that in an attempt to put an end to their whole deal, and they kill him so hard. It looks fun! I’m actually psyched to watch it.

Apostle is available for streaming on Netflix, if you want to skip the wait and see how right I was (he definitely dies).