FolknHell

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:
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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.
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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.

Grief turns feral, rituals turn bloody and nobody should watch this one alone. Bring Her Back drags folk horror into the present and bites hard.

Bring Her Back unsettled us in a way that crept under the skin and refused to leave. This is not a jump scare merchant or a knowing wink horror. It is dread soaked, body horror heavy and emotionally cruel in exactly the right way. From the off, the film announces itself as something viciously controlled. A pair of recently orphaned siblings are placed into foster care with Laura, a softly spoken grief counsellor whose kindness curdles almost immediately.

What follows is a slow tightening of the vice. Laura’s home is calm, ordered and deeply wrong. Her behaviour is precise, manipulative and chillingly plausible. As one of us put it, you feel gaslit alongside the characters. The horror is not just what happens, but how long it takes others to believe something is wrong.

The film’s use of Piper’s blindness is handled with rare restraint. There are no cheap perspective tricks, no exploitative visuals. Instead, vulnerability becomes tension. We know something she does not and that knowledge becomes unbearable. When violence arrives, it does so brutally and without relief. Several scenes had us pausing the film, not out of boredom but self-preservation.

Folk horror debate was inevitable. There is no village, no harvest festival, no ancient stones humming in a field. But there is ritual. There is tradition. There is an old belief system dragged into the present via grainy VHS tapes and desperate repetition. The cult is fragmented, the community absent, yet the ritual remains intact. That, for us, was enough.

Sally Hawkins is extraordinary. Her performance balances warmth and monstrosity so well that you almost understand her until you absolutely cannot. The children are equally convincing, grounding the film emotionally so that when it turns savage, it hurts.

As a pure horror experience, this is relentless. As folk horror, it stretches the boundaries but never snaps them. Whether you place it firmly in the genre or mark it as folk horror adjacent, Bring Her Back is a film that demands to be reckoned with and discussed preferably with someone else in the room.

FolknHell final score: 21 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.

A noir detective chases a debt through voodoo, fate and the Devil himself. Stylish, slippery and oddly folky. Worth the descent.
A humid nightmare of ceiling fans, cigarette smoke and moral rot, Angel Heart pulls FolknHell into unfamiliar territory and dares the trio to get snobbish. A private investigator heads south chasing a missing man and instead finds blood, ritual and a debt that can never be settled. The film leans hard into film noir with deep shadows, jazz soaked streets and a lead performance that carries the whole thing like a well worn coat.
Mickey Rourke is magnetic as Harold Angel, moving through the story with a bruised naivety that both works and frustrates. Robert De Niro plays it cool and controlled, all immaculate fingernails and quiet menace, while the New Orleans setting brings voodoo iconography, Catholic dread and a sense of ritual that flirts with folk horror rather than fully embracing it.
The conversation circles around atmosphere first. The hosts praise the cinematography, especially moments that feel almost monochrome until colour sneaks back in, and the way the film sustains mood for over an hour. Where it stumbles is in the final stretch. Revelations arrive thick and fast, sinister ideas are rushed through, and some motifs feel like they were meant to land harder than they do.
That leads to the big question. Is Angel Heart folk horror. The film has old beliefs, ritual, black magic and a community that quietly resists the outsider. But it also flips the formula. The detective is the danger, not the villagers. For some that inversion makes it an intriguing edge case. For others the voodoo and community elements feel more like set dressing than driving forces.
What everyone agrees on is that it is a fascinating watch. A Faustian story wrapped in noir clothing, elevated by performance and style, and let down slightly by missed opportunities for deeper dread. Not pure folk horror, but close enough to argue about over another drink.

FolknHell final score: 20 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.