FolknHell

Bright sunshine, folk songs and communal sex should not feel this menacing. The Wicker Man still manages the neat trick of looking almost cheerful while marching straight towards one of horror’s most unforgettable endings.

A policeman, a pagan island, and one of the most famous endings in horror cinema. Andy, Dave and David head to Summerisle for The Wicker Man and get into its strange musical spell, its battle of belief systems, and the question of whether this is still the defining folk horror film or simply the most iconic.

Andy finally gets to bring his favourite film to the table, which means The Wicker Man gets both passionate defence and a bit of healthy resistance. The conversation digs into the film’s odd balancing act as mystery, musical and folk horror landmark, with all three hosts agreeing that its horror is less about constant dread and more about the awful certainty of where it is heading.

They get stuck into Sergeant Howie as a devout Christian outsider blundering into a community whose beliefs he cannot understand and cannot tolerate. That clash between rigid authority and pagan ritual becomes the heart of the discussion, alongside the film’s use of masks, fertility rites, sacrifice and isolation. There is also a lively debate over the old folk horror test: threat of the land, isolated community, ancient origins. David pushes back on just how ancient Summerisle’s traditions really are, while Andy and Dave argue that the film still absolutely earns its place as one of the genre’s founding texts.

The mood swings between admiration, nerdy detail and a fair bit of filth, with talk of diegetic music, topiary penises, Brit Ekland’s famous not quite Brit Ekland scene, and the various cuts of the film. The final verdict is clear enough though. Whatever quibbles they have about age, pacing or how “horror” it really is, this is still folk horror royalty.

Final score: 24.5 out of 30.
Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

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A house sealed in salt is already a bad sign. Spending a year inside it with grief, lies and ceremonial magic makes it worse. FolknHell tackles A Dark Song: grief, ritual magic, guardian angels, and whether this eerie occult chamber piece counts as folk horror.

The film is Liam Gavin’s 2016 occult chamber piece about a grieving mother, Sophia, who hires the abrasive Henry Solomon to guide her through an elaborate ritual based on The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. What starts as a bid to speak to her dead child slowly reveals itself as something angrier, riskier and much more spiritually costly.

“It gives you a peek at the architecture of the universe.”

The conversation leans hard into what makes the film work so well. Andy, Dave and David love the stripped back set-up, the claustrophobic house, the drip feed of uncanny detail, and the way the film makes magic feel dangerous without ever tipping into anything daft. They spend plenty of time on the relationship between Sophia and Solomon, which shifts from mistrust and hostility into a bleak sort of dependence, with Catherine Walker and Steve Oram getting a lot of praise for carrying almost the whole film between them.

“It’s not what she wants, but it is what she needs.”

There is some debate over whether it fully fits the FolknHell folk horror test. It does not neatly match every rule, but the ancient ritual, total isolation, occult Christianity and growing sense of being trapped inside a logic you do not understand push it firmly into folk horror adjacent territory, before Andy finally plants his flag and calls it folk horror anyway.

“A house sealed in salt and a ritual built on lies is never going to end well.”

The big takeaway is that this is one of the highest rated films the hosts have covered so far. They single out the cigarette smoking appearance of Death, the astonishing guardian angel reveal, and the unexpectedly redemptive ending as moments that genuinely stick in the mind.

Final score: 23 out of 30.

Enjoyed this film too? Add your own score and comments for the film at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Also Referenced in this episode
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Aleister Crowley
Samuel MacGregor Mathers
Kabbalah
Hermes
Candyman
The Wicker Man
Midsommar
John Constantine
Clive Barker
Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Find us on the socials:
YouTube: @folknhell
Facebook: FolknHell
X: @FolknHell
Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of FolknHell, we head into the fungal murk of In the Earth (2021), Ben Wheatley’s strange, abrasive, hallucinatory pandemic folk horror, where science, ritual, sound and landscape all start speaking the same unnerving language. What begins as a journey into the woods to assist with isolated research soon curdles into something far weirder: standing stones, old lore, mycelial networks, mutilation, feverish experiments, and the creeping suspicion that the land is not just alive, but listening.

We dig into whether In the Earth is truly folk horror or something even stranger: a modern eco-mystical nightmare built from ancient anxieties and lockdown-era alienation. There is plenty here for FolknHell to get its teeth into: hostile landscape, buried folklore, a force rooted in the earth itself, and a growing sense that human beings are hopelessly unequipped to understand what they are poking.

Along the way, we talk about the film’s unsettling COVID texture, its blend of psychedelic horror and elemental menace, and the clash between artistic ritual and scientific method as two equally untrustworthy ways of trying to commune with whatever is out there in the woods. We also get into the film’s standing stone imagery, fungal intelligence, the role of Alma as the overlooked guide and survivor, and whether Wheatley is giving us a folk horror film in full, or smuggling one in through the side door under cover of experimental horror.
It is not a cosy watch, and it is not especially interested in holding your hand. But it is tense, grimly funny in places, full of memorable imagery, and unmistakably rooted in that FolknHell sweet spot where landscape, old fears and human arrogance meet.

So is In the Earth folk horror? We think yes, emphatically, though perhaps in a less traditional form than wicker effigies and village rites. This is folk horror with spores in its lungs and noise in its skull.

Expect spoilers, strong opinions, and a fair amount of sympathy for Joel Fry, who suffers more here than seems strictly necessary.

Enter the woods with us.
Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Find us on the socials:
YouTube: @folknhell
Facebook: FolknHell
X: @FolknHell
Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Irish fairies, Catholic guilt and one extremely ominous red door. Frewaka is exactly the sort of film FolknHell should fall for, which made it all the more annoying when it kept wandering off into the mist with its own plot.

Episode summary
Frewaka arrives wearing all the right clothes for folk horror. Remote Irish village. Fairy lore. Iron nailed up around the house. Bells in trees. Missing children. Family trauma. Village oddballs. A goat, naturally. It is thick with the sort of atmosphere that makes you sit up and think, right, here we go. And for a while, it really does feel like we are in safe, dread-soaked hands.

Shoo, still reeling from her mother’s death, takes a care job with Peg, an elderly woman living in a lonely old house full of rules, warnings and the sense that something is very wrong just outside the frame. From there the film starts digging into changelings, inherited fear, buried history and old supernatural debts, all wrapped up in Irish folklore and religious unease. There is a lot here to admire. The imagery is strong, the mood is properly eerie, and when Frewaka lands on a creepy idea, it really lands.

The trouble is that it also seems oddly determined not to explain itself until far too late. FolknHell spent a good chunk of the discussion trying to work out whether the film was being richly mysterious or just plain muddled. Peg appears to know absolutely everything and says almost nothing. Shoo strolls through moments that would send most people into the sea. And some of the film’s best ideas, especially the red door and the final procession, feel more haunting than satisfying.

On the all important question, though, there was no real argument. This is folk horror. No hedging, no qualifiers, no “adjacent” nonsense. The ingredients are all there and they are properly baked in. The frustration is that a film this atmospheric, this folkloric and this loaded with unsettling promise should probably have hit harder. Dave was the most forgiving with a 6, while Andy and David both landed on 4, giving Frewaka a FolknHell total of 14 out of 30. A proper folk horror, then. Just one that leaves you doing a bit more admin than you might like.

Key takeaways
Completely, undeniably folk horror. No debate there
Gorgeous eerie bits and folklore detail do a lot of the heavy lifting
The central mystery feels more tangled than clever by the end
That red door is doing award-worthy work
The final procession is exactly the sort of thing this film needed more of
Final FolknHell score: 14 out of 30

Links and references
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27828550/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_Fr%C3%A9waka
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frewaka
TMDb: https://www.themoviedb.org/search?language=en-GB&query=Frewaka
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frewaka

Referenced in this episode that you might want to look up
Sidhe
Changeling folklore
The Wicker Man
Lord of Misrule
Sator
Rabbit Trap
Philomena

Enjoyed this episode? Add your own score and comments for the film at https://www.folknhell.com/scores
Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Find us on the socials:
YouTube: @folknhell
Facebook: FolknHell
X: @FolknHell
Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sator is what happens when you leave one filmmaker alone in the woods for seven years with a camera, a toolbox, and a grudge against comfort. Jordan Graham does practically everything here, including dragging planks up a mountain and building the actual cabin, which explains why the film feels less like a set and more like a place you should not be standing in after sundown.

The plot is deliberately chewy and we all agree it is the sort of story that fully clicks after a couple of watches. Adam tries to isolate himself from the forest spirit Sator, but keeps coming back to Nonna’s tapes and automatic writing like it is a hotline to the thing itself. The family dynamic is grim, the dialogue is minimal, and the whole film runs on dread, creaks, and the awful feeling that the dark outside is slowly pushing its way in.

Dave is in awe of how good it looks, especially for something essentially built by one person, and he calls out the atmosphere as “almost suffocating”. Andy leans into the film student energy and the big influences, with Tarkovsky creeping into the imagery and the format switching adding to that dream logic unease. David gets the chills from the soundscape, describing it as a constant videogame style warning siren that never stops chanting at you.

We also spend a good chunk trying to untangle what the cult is, who is sacrificing who, and why the film underplays its biggest shocks so casually. The standout moment for all of us is the woman tied to the tree and what happens next, which lands like a punch precisely because the film refuses to make a big song and dance about it. Then we get distracted, as we always do, by the deer caller, instantly upgraded to the now canonical phrase: “a deer kazoo”.

Folk horror verdict: triple tick. Isolated people, ancient woods, rotten rituals, and old beliefs refusing to die quietly. This one is proper horror, and we all agree watching it alone is a deeply questionable life choice. “If it doesn’t scare you, you’re not human.”

FolknHell final score: 24 out of 30
Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Find us on the socials:
YouTube: @folknhell
Facebook: FolknHell
X: @FolknHell
Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.