It is vaguely set in the 1960s, in a remote community in Northern Ireland, where Matthew Macfadyen plays a self-righteous priest, much given to tipping back his head and hysterically addressing the Lord in moments of anger.

He is the son of a local businessman, played by Gerald McSorley, and has returned to his hometown to purge it of its wicked ways: drinking, petty crime and cockfighting.

This priest appears to be neither Catholic nor Protestant exactly, but part of a semi-stylised "Church Of God" in a community in which he appears to be the sole power, with no civil authority. At key moments of horror, no one calls the police or the fire brigade. It just doesn't occur to them. The movie is very like Lars von Trier in its naivety and unreality, but it has a silliness which is all its own.