If your brain needs a cheese covered late night snack, feed your head the quaint village thriller Daggers Inn, directed by James Smith and written by Smith and Caroline Spence. In jolly England there is Haxanbury, this gorgeous little smudge of a village out in the country. Despite the stillness of the rustic air, stirred by the occasionally milking, there is a storm brewing in the hamlet’s high powered law firm lead by Stanley Montagu-John (Martin W. Payne). He is struggling with the concerns his partner, Lauren Oakes (Terry Bamberger) has with the business direction the brutal secretary raping Toby Vass (James Hamer-Morton) is taking the firm.

Meanwhile, the village mechanic, Scott (Dwayne Thomas), secretly welcomes to the village the mysterious stranger, Donna Raven (Anna Danvers). Scott warns Donna that the village doesn’t like “their kind”, but she is determined to find out what happened to her sister, who was found in the village lake two years ago. Donna starts sniffing around the law firm, disturbing Vass, the big fish in the gravel pit, while he is spending time with his girlfriend, Bethany (Charlie Bond). Vass sends Mr. Robbins (David J. Briscoe), and later Mr. Pugh (David Streames), to investigate, intimate, and perhaps eliminate the new stranger in town. But they both return in a daze, underneath some kind of unexplainable power.

Daggers Inn is overflowing with the big cobblestone energy of its English country village location. The rustic setting is quaint to the taint, with relaxing backgrounds littering the film like chocolate chips in a cookie. The titular lodging in the movie is bordering on being a ruin, falling backwards into the forest as if being devoured, but that adds the whole moss-covered charm of the picture. More people unwind at the end of the day to rolling green hills and old rubble than you would think. That and the promise of some lighter entertainment is what drew me to Daggers Inn.

“… Scott warns Donna that the village doesn’t like ‘their kind’ …”

Keep in mind, there is a lot of cheese on this countryside cracker. The acting style is uniformly broad, but Smith seems to be doing this on purpose. The British have always been noticeable for their love of Spam, which is what comes closest to capturing the outrageous tone of performances. Danvers seems to be delivering Rachel Evan-Wood at the end of a sledgehammer. Also, due to sharing a strong facial resemblance and the same raven locks of hair, Hamer-Morton cannot escape coming off as a villainous Danny McBride.

There is also the ludicrousness of all the high powered corporate malfeasance going on out in the sticks. I know small town gossip is a invisible wildfire in such places, but the hissy fits over the self-importance the business wallows in are eyebrow raising. There is also all this pretending there is some mystery to solve when it is obvious from the beginning as to who is to blame. Then we have the undercurrent of cheekiness, which brought to mind that in another cinematic era, this film would have been packed with nudity like sardines in mustard.

So besides the gorgeous backdrops of wooded lanes, and crumbling bricks, what is worthwhile about Daggers Inn, considering how silly the production skews though out? Like a bag of dope hidden in a dumpster, Smith includes an incredibly delicate horror element to spill the tea a little. What is meant by the “their kind” that Donna belongs to is never explained, which gives the movie an eerie vibration that rises from the spray cheese clinging to everything like ivy. Even though Smith chooses an irritating anti-climax for the final comeuppance, his devotion to the subtlety of the supernatural elements adds class where there was none. This movie is not nutritious, it is not good for you at all, but Daggers Inn is a greasy, country gravy-covered pile of spookiness that is best consumed at a time of diminished consciousness.