The following day, Gwen awakes to see her mother standing in the pasture among their entire flock of sheep, all of which are dead and mutilated.

She observes bloody hand prints throughout the house and rotting food on the table as if something sudden and violent had happened.

After supper, Gwen finds her mother cutting her arms and letting the blood flow into a bowl.

A young man who smiled at Gwen in church attempts to buy some carrots from her but his father forces him to leave.

When Gwen refuses, Mother begins angrily hacking off the horse's head with a hatchet, and has another seizure.

Mother instructs Gwen to retrieve a letter from a box and tells her it arrived shortly after Father left.

As Gwen reads the letter she discovers that Father is not returning, for reasons that are unclear, and that Mother has been concealing this from the girls.

Before release, Screen International picked out Gwen as one of the buzz titles from the UK to be seen at the American Film Market of 2018.

[5] Gwen was also featured in the Great8 program at the Cannes Film Festival 2018, a showcase by the British Council of exciting new UK talent.

The film became one of the festival's buzz titles, drawing praise for its folk horror roots and unnerving tone.

The site's critics' consensus reads: "Gwen's relentlessly grim outlook may wear on some viewers, but it remains a reasonably gripping, solidly assembled descent into atmospheric period horror.

[8] Joe Lipsett of Bloody Disgusting gave the film a positive review: "Clever, beautiful and well-acted, Gwen proves to be an unexpected delight.