FolknHell

Three women washing clothes in a dark Basque forest have a few stories to tell. So do Andy, Dave and David, once they have recovered from the headgear. Is Gaua the real folk horror deal?

A frightened woman escapes into the woods. Her husband may or may not be dead. Three old women offer sanctuary, provided there is a decent horror story to go with it.

This week, FolknHell tackles Gaua (The Night) (2025), Paul Urkijo Alijo's Basque-language horror film. Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall find plenty to admire: a tree-bark wolf, a very unwelcome chicken-headed visitor, witches flying through the night, an extraordinary sabbath and hats that could probably have their own episode.

But there's more than witchery here. The film pits Catholic authority against older beliefs, and one woman's desire against the people determined to control it. The three hosts agree it's folk horror. They're less united on its pacing, tension and precisely who counts as an outsider.

There are comparisons with The Witch and November, plus a diversion into the fine art of rowing a bathtub through the sky.

Spoiler warning: The discussion reveals major plot turns and the ending. Watch Gaua first if you'd rather let the forest introduce itself.

Folk horror. A visually spectacular, often funny and surprisingly moving piece of Basque witchcraft, even if the tension doesn't always keep up with the creatures. 22.5/30 overall.

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Discussion of domestic abuse, coercive religious authority, homophobia, death, violence and disturbing supernatural imagery. Strong language and major spoilers.

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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Ari Aster’s Hereditary starts with a funeral and somehow finds several worse places to go. FolknHell talks miniatures, grief, ritual, Paimon, a house with no air in it and whether this ferocious family nightmare really belongs in folk horror.

Hereditary (2018) does not so much build tension as move it into the house and refuse to let it leave.

In Episode 34, FolknHell returns to Ari Aster’s feature debut, with Dave Houghton seeing it for the first time and Andy Davidson and David Hall discovering that repeat viewings do very little to make the thing less upsetting. The discussion gets into Toni Collette and Alex Wolff’s performances, the strange miniature rooms, the film’s near-total absence of relief, the cult hiding in plain sight and the small details that make much more sense once you know where it is all heading.

Then there is the folk horror question. The belief system is certainly there. So is ritual, inherited power and a community operating by rules the central family barely understands. Place matters too, particularly the Graham house and treehouse. The awkward bit is the outsider. Peter may be the clearest candidate, except he has been part of the plan from the beginning without knowing it.

The result is a film FolknHell regards as at least standing right on the edge of folk horror, and possibly rather more firmly inside than it first appears.

Spoilers throughout. If you have not seen Hereditary, watch it before listening. This is not one to have spoiled for you.

A genuinely frightening, meticulously controlled horror film whose occult machinery only becomes fully visible once it is far too late to do anything about it. The folk horror label is not completely tidy, but the secret belief system, inherited ritual, trapped family and gradual revelation of an organised cult make a strong case. Excellent, exhausting and not remotely interested in cheering anybody up.

• Andy Davidson: 8/10
• Dave Houghton: 7/10
• David Hall: 8/10
• Total: 23/30

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• TMDb: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/493922-hereditary?language=en-GB
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• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7784604/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hereditary
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_(film)
• Official trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6wWKNij_1M

Spoilers throughout. Discussion includes child death, decapitation, graphic violence, grief, family trauma, possession and self-harm imagery.

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
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The Blair Witch Project became a phenomenon by convincing audiences there might really be something in the woods. FolknHell goes back to Burkittsville to ask what remains once the marketing fog clears, whether the film still works, and whether a few bound twigs are enough to make it folk horror.

Spoilers throughout. Watch the film first if you want to go into the woods unprepared.

The Blair Witch Project arrived in 1999 with a tiny production, a huge idea and one of the most effective horror marketing campaigns of its era. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez sent Heather, Mike and Josh into the Maryland woods, then let the audience do an extraordinary amount of the frightening for them.

FolknHell heads back in to see what is actually there.

We talk about the early internet campaign that made the footage feel disturbingly plausible, the natural performances that still sell panic better than much of the plot, and the problem with a film built around three people, two cameras and a great many leaves. There is also the bundle outside the tent, Heather's terrified close-up, the house, Mike facing the corner and the persistent feeling that the film keeps finding good ideas and then wandering away from them.

Then comes the folk horror question. The woods matter, certainly. But where is the coherent local belief? Where are the folk? And are three filmmakers from not very far away really outsiders in the sense that matters?

A hugely influential horror film gets a rather less reverential FolknHell rewatch.

As a cultural event, The Blair Witch Project still matters. As a film, the episode finds it much thinner. The performances, Heather's panic and the final image retain some force, but the tension is rarely sustained and too many promising ideas are barely worked.

By the FolknHell test, it is not really folk horror. The woods provide place, but the film never builds a convincing belief system or a meaningful community of insiders for the filmmakers to confront.

• David Hall: 2/10
• Dave Houghton: 4/10
• Andy Davidson: 4/10
• Total: 10/30

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Spoilers throughout, with discussion of panic, implied violence and child murder within the film's fictional folklore.

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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FolknHell heads to a remote Devon church for Elliot Goldner’s found-footage horror The Borderlands, also known as Final Prayer. There are Vatican sceptics, far too many explanations about cameras, an older belief system under the floorboards, and an ending that finally remembers how horrible all of this ought to be.

Elliot Goldner’s The Borderlands (2013), released in some territories as Final Prayer, sends a Vatican investigation team to a remote West Country church after reports of a possible miracle. Their job is to test, record and ideally debunk what is happening. The film takes this recording part very seriously. Possibly more seriously than anyone needed.

Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall pick through the headcams, static cameras, strange noises, sceptical clergy and the older religious site sitting underneath the Christian one. The discussion gets into the film’s biggest strength and biggest problem: there is a good folk horror idea buried here, but the found-footage machinery keeps getting in its way.

There is plenty to like. Gordon Kennedy’s Deacon gets particular praise, several scares land properly, and the final descent beneath the church is claustrophobic, grotesque and difficult to forget. But the local belief system is thinly felt, the villagers barely register, and the supposed outsiders often seem to be outsiders to almost nobody.

Spoilers throughout, including discussion of the ending.

Yes, The Borderlands counts as folk horror for FolknHell, but not an especially strong example of it. Place is doing most of the work. Belief is present but underdeveloped, while the outsider element is weakened by the fact that the investigators are practically the only people the film lets us spend time with. As a horror film it works better. The journey is creepy, sometimes properly frightening, and worth taking. Start pulling at the logic, though, and quite a lot comes loose.

• Total: 15/30

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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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Charlie Robb’s Loner (2025) drops a lonely, deeply unreliable vlogger into the Northumbrian woods and lets social-media fakery collide with something that may be older, hungrier and considerably less interested in Wi-Fi. FolknHell asks whether this is folk horror, horror-comedy, or folk horror about folk horror.

This week FolknHell heads into the Northumbrian woods with Loner (2025), Charlie Robb’s found-footage horror built around Angus, an aspiring influencer whose wilderness retreat very quickly exposes the gap between the man he performs online and the man actually standing in the trees.

There is plenty to enjoy before the horror properly gets its boots muddy: fake fishing, emergency coffee supplies, hopeless survival skills and an influencer persona held together with optimism, denial and supermarket provisions. Then the woods start taking things from him. A terrified woman appears. Strange white stones, bones, a folklore book and a barely glimpsed presence push the film towards something much stranger.

The argument becomes the episode. Is Angus encountering a genuine forest deity that demands sacrifice? Is he using folklore to construct an excuse for what he has done? Or does the film deliberately leave both possibilities breathing down each other’s necks?

That ambiguity carries straight into the folk horror question. The place works. The outsider works. The belief system is much shakier. By the end, the phrase that sticks is "meta folk horror". Not straightforward folk horror so much as a film using folk horror itself as part of its story about storytelling, isolation and self-invention.

Loner is not comfortably traditional folk horror, but it is absolutely worth a folk horror conversation. Its Northumbrian landscape, outsider structure and folklore machinery pull strongly in that direction, while its unreliable narrator keeps threatening to reveal the whole thing as fabrication. Charlie Robb’s performance does much of the heavy lifting, and the film gets more interesting the longer the argument goes on.

• Andy Davidson: 8/10
• Dave Houghton: 6/10
• David Hall: 6.5/10

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• TMDb: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1489999-loner/reviews?language=en-GB
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/loner_2025
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33298831/

Spoilers throughout, including discussion of death, blood, cannibalism, mental health, self-delusion and graphic meat imagery.

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
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Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada gives FolknHell a lost fishing boat, a thirty-year time slip, suspiciously dead fish and a surprisingly strong case for Cornish folk horror. Andy, David and Dave agree on the film. The timeline is another matter entirely. Spoilers throughout. Watch the film first unless you fancy sailing directly into the temporal fog.

Episode 30 takes Andy Davidson, David Hall and Dave Houghton back to Cornwall for Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada (2026), a film in which a missing fishing boat returns after thirty years and immediately makes time everybody’s problem.

With the speakers now properly attributed, the argument becomes even better. Andy brings his own Cornish background to the film’s portrait of fishing communities, second homes and local decline. Dave digs into the 16mm photography, square frames, static land and seasick movement at sea. David becomes increasingly convinced that tiny physical details, circular falls and a pile of very dead fish are telling us more than they first appear to be.

Then comes the folk horror question. FolknHell’s current test is place, belief and the stranger. Rose of Nevada has all three, although Dave quite reasonably asks whether existential dread really makes it horror. Andy’s answer: absolutely.

We also get Mogi as the Ancient Mariner, a pub that suddenly comes back to life, one magnificent hole in a roof, Mark Jenkin’s silent 27-second filming method and a continuity error involving a door that is promptly reclassified as a time slip.

Folk horror. Not pagan sacrifice or occult ritual, but a distinct Cornish place, a community sustained by belief and loss, outsiders entering an inherited world, and existential horror generated by time, identity and the return of a past that should have stayed past.

29 out of 30

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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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FolknHell tackles Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), its still-shocking violence, suspicious barbecue and surprisingly solid claim to American folk horror. Also, this is Take Two because somebody forgot to press record. Spoilers throughout. Watch the film first if you would rather enter the farmhouse without knowing exactly where the hooks are.

Some films age gracefully. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) still looks as though it has been left in the Texas sun beside a sack of bones, and that is very much a compliment.

In Episode 29, Andy Davidson, David Hall and Dave Houghton revisit Tobe Hooper’s horror landmark and ask why its grainy, documentary-style nightmare remains so brutally effective more than fifty years later. The discussion gets into the first hammer blow, the meat-hook sequence, Marilyn Burns finding several entirely new levels of screaming, and Gunnar Hansen giving Leatherface a strange flicker of pathos beneath the mask.

Then comes the FolknHell question: is this really folk horror? The answer involves an isolated patch of land, a family with its own inherited rituals, bone totems, slaughterhouse traditions and a group of outsiders who discover that the local rules include becoming barbecue. There is also a comparison with House of 1000 Corpses, a debate over whether the film refuses to glorify violence or is gleefully sadistic, and the mystery of a missing sound effect that one host had apparently been carrying in his head for decades.

This is also the second attempt at recording the episode. The first version, which nobody recorded, was obviously the greatest podcast ever made.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is American folk horror as well as a proto-slasher. The isolated landscape, closed family community, inherited slaughterhouse customs, ritualised bones and doomed outsiders fit the genre with alarming neatness. It is not an enjoyable film in the cosy sense, but it remains an essential and astonishingly powerful horror experience.

FolknHell Score

25 out of 30

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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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Bol and Rial escape South Sudan, enter the British asylum system and discover that trauma has followed them into the wallpaper. FolknHell debate Remi Weekes's His House, its terrifying apeth and whether travelling folklore still counts as folk horror.

A grim English house, a Dinka night witch and three men immediately making the folk horror definition everybody's problem.

In Episode 28, Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall discuss Remi Weekes's His House (2020), starring Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu and Matt Smith. Bol and Rial have survived war, displacement and a lethal crossing, only to be placed in a decaying home where the walls are noisy, the dead are restless and the asylum rules make moving out rather awkward.

The conversation gets into the film's refugee trauma, survivor's guilt and low-level bureaucratic nightmare, plus Bol's desperate push to assimilate and Rial's refusal to treat the past like unwanted luggage. There is plenty of admiration for the performances, the labyrinthine council estate, the watery footprints and one light-switch sequence that could have gone on all night, in the nicest possible appalling way.

Then comes the apeth in the room. Is His House folk horror because its terror grows from Dinka folklore and inherited belief? Or is it a psychological ghost story that happens to contain a witch? Dave and David say not quite folk horror. Andy says yes, then accepts defeat under protest and begins considering restraints!

Spoilers throughout. Watch the film first unless you enjoy having your moral devastation efficiently pre-delivered.

FolknHell Verdict

His House is not traditional, land-bound folk horror, but it has strong folkloric bones and makes a compelling case for folk horror that travels with displaced people. Whatever shelf it ends up on, all three hosts agree it is concise, intelligent, frightening and well worth watching, then arguing about long after the walls have stopped whispering.

FolknHell Score

28 out of 30

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🔗 IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8508734/

🔗 TMDb: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/575774-his-house

🔗 Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/his_house

🔗 Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_House

Content Warning: Spoilers throughout, with discussion of war, displacement, racism, refugee trauma, child death, drowning, grief, violence and disturbing supernatural imagery.

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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FolknHell enters Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2016) with special guest Ian Winterton. Is this the perfect modern folk horror film, or does its Christian Devil complicate the usual ancient-threat rules? Expect Puritan pride, phenomenal performances, baby mush and Black Phillip at full gallop.

In Episode 27, Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall are joined by writer, lecturer and former film critic Ian Winterton to discuss Robert Eggers’ feature debut, The Witch.

The family is isolated, the corn is rotting and the goat is considerably more articulate than anyone would like. The group digs into William’s pride, Thomasin’s place inside a collapsing patriarchal household, Eggers’ obsessive historical research, the period dialogue and a cast firing at frankly indecent levels.

Then Ian throws a crooked branch into the usual FolknHell criteria. If the threat is Christianity, Satanism and European witchcraft carried into New England by settlers, does it really count as an older force rising from the land? The answer leads into ergot theories, folktale logic, the Unholy Trinity and a firm final verdict on the film’s folk horror credentials.

There is also admiration for Harvey Scrimshaw’s extraordinary death scene, the almost invisible appearance of the Devil’s red boot, the ecstatic final flight and the early sequence that has made many unsuspecting viewers quietly decide they have somewhere else to be.

Spoilers throughout. Watch the film before listening unless you are happy to meet Black Phillip contractually unprepared.

The Witch is unequivocally folk horror, even if it makes the checklist squirm. Isolation, inherited belief, landscape, accusation and religious terror do the heavy lifting, while the supernatural gives the family’s collapse a beautifully wicked shove. It is severe, meticulous and one of the defining horror films of its era. Watch it, then listen to the argument.

FolknHell Score

28 out of 30

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🔗 Ian Winterton: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3410151/

🔗 IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/

🔗TMDb: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/310131-the-witch

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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FolknHell dig up The Blood On Satan’s Claw, Piers Haggard’s 1971 folk horror classic, originally released as Satan’s Skin, and ask, "Is it one of the true pillars of the genre, or just a disjointed rural nightmare with excellent eyebrows?" Spoilers throughout, obviously. If you have not seen the film, consider this your warning from the edge of the field.

This episode, Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall head into the furrows for The Blood On Satan’s Claw, Piers Haggard’s 1971 tale of rural panic, possessed children, suspiciously hairy patches and authority figures making one terrible decision after another.

Often named as part of folk horror’s so-called Unholy Trinity alongside The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, this is a film with impeccable credentials: an isolated village, something nasty unearthed from the land, old evil pushing up through the soil, and a community that reacts to crisis with all the calm restraint of a mob holding rope.

The chaps discuss the film’s odd portmanteau origins, its brilliant but bumpy structure, Angel Blake’s alarming rise as the leader of the village children, the deeply uncomfortable mix of sex, violence and moral panic, and whether this is actually the most openly supernatural member of the Unholy Trinity. There is also time for Anthony Ainley’s excellent priest, Patrick Wymark’s magnificently unpleasant judge, the skull with the living eye, Satan being assembled like a rural occult flat-pack, and the heroic return of the wobbly sword.

Scores are cast, claws are counted, and the big question is asked: is The Blood On Satan’s Claw a great folk horror film, or just a flawed but essential one?

The Blood On Satan’s Claw is absolutely folk horror. Rural isolation, threat from the land, old evil, corrupted youth, religious authority, mob justice and deeply strange local behaviour all come bundled together in one filthy little 1971 package.

It is also messy, abrupt and sometimes baffling, but that is part of its strange power. The FolknHell score: 19 out of 30.

FolknHell Score

out of 30

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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 remote hotel. A haunted honeymoon suite. A chalk circle that really should have been finished properly. Hokum gives us scares, screams and one very busy dumbwaiter, but does it give us folk horror?

Full Description

In this episode the FolknHell trio check into Hokum, Damien McCarthy’s 2026 horror about a cynical, suicidal writer retreating to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, finish his book, and generally be horrible to almost everyone he meets. Before long, there are rumours of a witch, a locked honeymoon suite, a missing hotel worker, magic mushrooms, a terrifying cellar, and a plot that starts behaving like a locked-room mystery after several pints.

The good news: the film is genuinely scary. Andy and Dave both found it tense, jumpy and effective in the cinema, while David admits it made him scream “like a lemon”. The bad news: the more they talk, the more Hokum starts to wobble. Om Bauman is hard to care about, the backstory arrives far too late, the police apparently cannot search a building properly, and the folk horror elements feel less woven in than nailed on.

The big debate lands on whether Hokum is folk horror at all. There is an isolated setting, a witch, folklore, chalk protection and a buried basement, but the real threat is human panic, cowardice and Mel making every possible wrong decision.

Scary once, flawed on reflection, and probably folk horror adjacent rather than the real thing.

FolknHell score: 15 out of 30

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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 hitman thriller that slowly mutates into something ancient, ritualistic and deeply disturbing. The more we watched Kill List, the less certain we became about what we were actually seeing.

Ben Wheatley's Kill List has built a reputation as one of the most important British horror films of the 21st century, and after revisiting it the FolknHell crew found themselves just as fascinated, confused and impressed as ever. What begins as the story of two ex-soldiers turned contract killers gradually unfolds into something much stranger. Jay and Gal take on a lucrative assignment, only to discover a trail of ritualistic murders, grateful victims, occult symbols and a conspiracy that stretches far beyond a simple kill contract.

The conversation explores the film's claustrophobic handheld style, its brutal realism, and its portrait of male alienation and trauma. Andy, Dave and David discuss how the film seems to reveal new layers on every viewing, yet somehow becomes more puzzling at the same time.

Naturally, the big question is whether Kill List belongs in the folk horror canon. Despite its modern setting and lack of traditional folk horror imagery, the hosts ultimately conclude that its secretive cult, ritual sacrifice, ancient symbols and collision between modern life and older belief systems firmly earn it a place in the genre.

The verdict? A rare moment of complete agreement. Andy, Dave and David all awarded the film 8/10, praising its ambition, rewatch value and willingness to leave audiences unsettled long after the credits roll.

FolknHell Score

24 out of 30

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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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Stone circles, satanic runes and one of the greatest horror performances in British cinema. Andy, Dave and David are joined by legendary horror author Ramsey Campbell to dig into Night of the Demon, a film that helped shape folk horror decades before the genre even had a label. The demon gets debated, the atmosphere gets worshipped, and scepticism does not fare especially well.

This very special FolknHell episode with the legendary horror writer Ramsey Campbell joining the boys to talk about his all time favourite horror film, Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon. Before getting to the film itself, the conversation detours through folk horror’s literary roots, The Hungry Moon, Arthur Machen, Lovecraft, Penda’s Fen, and why British landscapes still feel uniquely suited to supernatural dread.

Once the film begins, things get gloriously obsessive. The hosts get stuck into the film’s extraordinary atmosphere, Ted Scaife’s cinematography, Ken Adam’s production design, and Neil McGinnis’ astonishing performance as Julian Karswell, a charming occultist who might genuinely have summoned something infernal. There is plenty of debate around the decision to show the demon so early, with David arguing it weakens Holden’s sceptical arc while Dave and Ramsey defend the dramatic irony it creates.

The folk horror question turns out to be surprisingly complicated. By the FolknHell criteria, Night of the Demon only partially fits, yet everybody agrees it absolutely belongs in the canon. Ancient belief systems, witchcraft, isolated rituals, haunted landscapes and old forces bleeding into modern Britain are all over this thing. It may not sit comfortably inside the so called “Unholy Trinity”, but nobody here is arguing against its place at the table.

The final scores land high. Dave and Andy both land on 9, while David comes in as the resident harsher marker with a 7.

FolknHell Score

25 out of 30

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🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next

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 country retreat should be peaceful. Unless every man you meet has the same face, the same blame, and eventually, rather more birth canal than anyone ever asked for!

Alex Garland’s Men follows Harper, played by Jessie Buckley, as she retreats to a rural house after the violent death of her husband. What looks like a healing break quickly becomes an unnerving confrontation with grief, guilt and a village full of men, all played by Rory Kinnear, who seem to embody different shades of male threat, blame and entitlement.

Andy, Dave and David are split on how well it works. David finds a lot to admire in the film’s attempt to explore trauma from a woman’s perspective, reading the house as Harper’s head and the male characters as psychological archetypes rather than literal villagers. Dave is intrigued but kept at arm’s length by the film’s allegorical style, feeling that the lack of reality also reduces the sense of jeopardy. Andy is the least convinced, praising the performances and visuals but finding the film heavy handed, especially once the final act starts birthing Rory Kinnears like a cursed Russian doll.

On the folk horror question, the verdict is clear but nuanced. Men uses folk horror imagery beautifully, with the Green Man, fertility carvings, old houses, rural isolation and ancient symbolic weight all doing plenty of atmospheric work. But the hosts land on it being dressed in folk horror rather than truly being folk horror. The threat is not the land or the community. It is Harper’s trauma, guilt and the men in her head.

FolknHell Score

15 out of 30

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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 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.

FolknHell Score

24.5 out of 30

🔗Give us your score and share your thoughts on this film here

🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch nextBright 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.

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
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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.

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.

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.

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.

FolknHell Score

23 out of 30

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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.

FolknHell Score

21.5 out of 30

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🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next

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
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• X: @FolknHell
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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

FolknHell Score

14 out of 30

🔗Give us your score and share your thoughts on this film here

🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next

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
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• 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
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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 Score

21 out of 30

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🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next

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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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 Score

20 out of 30

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🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next

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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Lord of Misrule does not so much ease you into folk horror as shove your face straight into the maypole. From the opening moments it is corn dollies, pagan ornaments, horned skulls, chanting villagers and ominous festival prep. Within minutes we were all saying the same thing: “this thing is leaking folk horror out of its pores”. There is no slow burn here. It is folk horror turned up to eleven before anyone has had time to ask what day it is.

The setup is classic. A newly arrived vicar and her family move to a remote English village just in time for the annual harvest festival. Bells ring, Morris men bash sticks, bonfires crackle, and the whole thing feels like a village fete that has quietly joined a cult. When the vicar’s daughter is chosen as the Harvest Angel and then disappears mid celebration, the film should snap into panic mode. Instead, the reaction is oddly muted. As we put it at the time, “this is concern, not dread”, and that lack of urgency hangs over the rest of the film like damp bunting.

A lot of our frustration comes from how early everything is signposted. We know something is wrong almost immediately, and the film never really pretends otherwise. Unlike The Wicker Man, where discoveries unfold alongside the central character, here we are always ahead of the game. The villagers feel practised rather than secretive, the rituals rehearsed rather than inherited. The moment we kept coming back to was the Lord of Misrule silencing the crowd with a single strike of his staff. It looks impressive, but it also prompted the very FolknHell reaction of, “this feels less like tradition and more like a very well run rehearsal”.

There are strong elements scattered throughout. The children are genuinely unsettling, the imagery often striking, and Ralph Ineson brings real weight and authority to his role. He hints at grief, belief, and something deeply personal beneath the mask. Unfortunately, the script rarely gives him or anyone else the space to explore why they believe in this ritual beyond the fact that the plot demands it. Several characters feel underwritten, especially the husband, who mostly exists to look baffled until things are already on fire. Exposition replaces investigation, and key revelations are explained rather than uncovered.

By the final act, Lord of Misrule commits fully to its folk horror identity. Old gods, sacrifice, and shifting power structures all come into play. It absolutely counts as folk horror, but it is folk horror by the book, with most of the answers written in bold on page one. As we summed it up round the table, “everything’s here, apart from the drama”.

The FolknHell score lands at 16 out of 30, which feels about right. This is a watchable, decent effort with strong atmosphere and some memorable moments, but it lacks the restraint and mystery needed to truly get under the skin. Worth a look, unlikely to haunt you, and a reminder that sometimes a harvest festival is far creepier when it looks normal first.

FolknHell Score

16 out of 30

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🔗Visit folknhell.com for more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next

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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Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968) is supposed to be one of British folk horror's sacred texts. FolknHell has questions. Vincent Price terrorises East Anglia, the violence gets nastier than Hammer, and the whole thing starts looking suspiciously like a revenge film with a very good hat.

Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968) arrives carrying a large reputation. Vincent Price plays Matthew Hopkins, a travelling witch-hunter turning accusation, fear and civil-war chaos into money, sex and violence. It is also routinely named alongside The Blood on Satan's Claw and The Wicker Man as part of British folk horror's so-called unholy trinity.

FolknHell is considerably less convinced.

Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall get into the film's human cruelty, Puritan hypocrisy, beautiful East Anglian countryside, spectacular quantity of horse riding and a revenge plot David describes as a "15th century John Wick". The real argument, though, is about belief. The villagers accuse, Hopkins profits and people suffer, but where is the shared folklore, ritual or older system of belief that makes The Wicker Man feel unmistakably folk horror?

Houghton makes the strongest case for the film itself, arguing that its grounded brutality, political edge and distance from contemporary Hammer fantasy give it real significance. Andy and David remain less persuaded that significance makes it good.

Spoilers throughout.

Historically important, brutally grounded and carried by a striking Vincent Price performance, but FolknHell's verdict is that Witchfinder General is not really folk horror. It has the landscape, the hats and the witchcraft accusations. What it lacks is the thing underneath them: a coherent folk belief system driving the horror. The threat is human nature, greed and power.

12 out of 30

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🔗 Read about the unholy Trinity on our blog.

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
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A wealthy Korean American family hires a team of spiritual specialists after their daughter starts screaming the house down thanks to a furious ancestor. Andy, Dave, and David follow the trail as the Scooby Doo crew of geomancers, shamans, and funeral whisperers are flown in to sort out the cursed feng shui. It begins simply enough. Move granddad to a nicer bit of land, make his afterlife more pleasant, try not to set anything on fire. Then they open the coffin and a snake with a woman’s head slides out. Things go downhill from there.

Granddad turns out to be a collaborator from the Japanese occupation, buried on poisoned land, and very keen on terrorising his own descendants. His ghost pops up in mirrors, squeezes hearts, and generally behaves like the world’s worst patriarch. Once he is dealt with, the film cheerfully announces that there is an enormous coffin hidden underneath his grave. Of course there is. Inside is a giant samurai, pinned upright through the chest with a sword and absolutely not in the mood for reconciliation.

From there it all escalates. Exploding pig sheds. Monks being flung about. A fireball streaking across the sky that looks suspiciously like Monkey from Monkey Magic. The shamans work overtime. The geomancer questions every life choice that led him here. And the three of us attempt to keep up with the folklore, the history, and the subtitles, which sometimes appear to have been written by a cheerful intern with Google Translate.

The big argument comes when we try to decide if Exhuma counts as folk horror. Andy swears it does because the whole story is steeped in Korean folklore, national wounds, and the idea of land holding centuries of rage. Dave sees it more as a straight horror film with history glued on top. David goes in thinking it is folk horror, then changes his mind halfway through, then changes it again. Which is very on brand for David.

What we do all agree on is that the Scooby Doo crew are brilliant. They feel like real people with real skills, not just exposition machines, and the film wisely keeps them alive. For a two and a quarter hour horror film, it rips along with barely a moment to breathe, and even when we have no idea what is happening we are having a great time.

Exhuma shocked us with how spectacular it is. Massive in scale, rich in folklore, packed with ideas, and somehow still funny in places where it should not be. It also made ninety four million dollars and became the sixth biggest South Korean film ever, so clearly the rest of the world had as much fun as we did.

A wild, baffling, folklore soaked ride that we happily dropped a score of twenty two out of thirty on.

🔗 Visit the FolknHell website for more episodes and blog posts

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

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Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men gives the trio one of their most intricate puzzles yet, a film that marries Cornish landscape, ritual repetition, and fractured time into something hypnotic and quietly unsettling. Set on a remote stone island off the Cornish coast, the story follows an unnamed volunteer who spends her days observing a cluster of flowers, maintaining a failing generator, and dropping stones into an abandoned tin mine. Her routine appears simple, but the repetition reveals changes that cannot be explained by ordinary time. Lichen grows on the flowers at the same moment it begins to creep across the scar on her own body, a scar tied to a long buried trauma. The date is the first of May, the anniversary of a maritime tragedy that haunts both her and the island.

The conversation explores how the film treats time as a fluid and circular force rather than a linear path. Ghostly miners, drowned sailors, children from a vanished school, and folk singers appear and disappear as if the past is pushing its way into the present. The group unpack how the film’s heavy grain, radio static, and repeated imagery create a sense of permanence that exceeds any human scale. Andy, who grew up near the filming locations, recognises home in the standing stones and cliff paths, deepening the discussion around place and memory.

FolknHell consider the volunteer not simply as a character but as a living extension of the island itself. Her stillness, her red coat, her lack of dialogue, and her connection to both the stone and the earth below all imply that she is the vessel through which the island remembers its own history. Every ritual drop of a stone into the mine becomes an act that links present moments with the island’s centuries of labour, loss, and buried stories. The lichen on the flowers and on her body suggests a slow merging of human and landscape.

When the question of folk horror arises, the boys find an unusually clear answer. The threat comes directly from the land. The isolated community exists in fragments of memory. The connection to an older world is woven into every frame. The horror is not found in monsters or sudden frights but in the overwhelming sense of an island that has existed far longer than any of the people who walk across it. This makes Enys Men a refined example of the genre, one that replaces shock with atmosphere and uses silence as its primary tool.

The trio debate how the film rewards patience while offering very little in the way of conventional narrative comfort. For Dave it is demanding and at times opaque, though artistically compelling. David admires its depth but finds it less emotionally gripping on a second viewing. Andy is captivated by its artistry and by its deep roots in Cornish culture and geography. Their combined score of twenty five point five out of thirty reflects a film that is challenging, visually striking, and rich with ideas. It evokes isolation, the passage of time, and the eerie sense that the ground beneath your feet is alive with memory.

Wikipedia: link

IMBD: link

Rotten Tomatos: link

🔗 Visit the FolknHell website for more episodes and blog posts

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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In the Welsh Valleys and Yorkshire fields, something stirs. Two couples, two hauntings; one whispered through fairy rings, the other screamed through roots and ritual. Rabbit Trap offers tenderness in the face of loss; Starve Acre finds horror in what the land remembers.

Our Halloween special, a double helping of ritual, grief, and mycelial menace, pairs Bryn Chainey’s dreamlike Rabbit Trap with Daniel Kokotajlo’s devastating Starve Acre.

Different tones, same soil. One heals, the other devours.

A sound engineer (Dev Patel) and his composer wife (Rose McEwen) retreat to the Welsh Valleys to rediscover inspiration. Instead, they find a mysterious child in the woods, and the faint pull of the fairy realm.

Blurring the line between healing and haunting, Rabbit Trap weaves changeling myth, fairy-ring folklore, and electronic soundscapes into a story of grief transfigured.

Its intimacy is hypnotic: a film where sound carries half the story, and the unseen hums just beneath the soil.

“It’s not a film about fear. It’s about finally meaning it.” — Andy Davidson

Score: 28/30

Verdict: A beautiful, immersive folk horror, poetic, unsettling, and quietly redemptive.

Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark play a grieving couple drawn into an ancient ritual tied to the land beneath their Yorkshire home.

Here, loss becomes obsession and the soil answers back with cruelty. Starve Acre takes the folklore of sacrifice and drags it into raw, contemporary grief — a story of necromancy, love, and the terrible cost of devotion.

Where Rabbit Trap whispers, this one roars. Wide landscapes, heavy silences, and the suffocating inevitability of myth.

“Where Rabbit Trap gives your life back, Starve Acre asks what you’ll give up to get it.” — David Hall

Score: 24/30

Verdict: Traditional and brutal. The Wicker Man’s darker cousin, steeped in earth and loss.

• Ritual & Sacrifice: In one story, ritual heals; in the other, it devours.
• Loss & Renewal: Rabbit Trap mourns the child never born; Starve Acre the one buried too soon.
• Sound & Silence: The former is composed in close-mic whispers; the latter in wind and soil.
• Fungi & Folklore: Mycelium as metaphor and menace. Rot, rebirth, and everything between.
• The Land as Consciousness: Both films remind us the ground remembers, even when we try to forget.

In Rabbit Trap, sound is not background, it’s the bloodstream. Recording equipment, field tapes, and the hiss of the landscape shape every emotional turn.

In Starve Acre, the sound is absence, the breath before a scream, the creak of a root giving way.

Together they form a conversation between microphones and ghosts.

Two sides of the same ritual. Rabbit Trap offers poetic rebirth; Starve Acre drags you through the mud and makes you pay for it.

Together they form a perfect Halloween pairing, proof that British folk horror is alive, growing, and quietly colonising your subconscious.

🔗 Visit the FolknHell website for more episodes and blog posts

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
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A starving village, a lovesick girl, and a devil with a taste for mischief.

This week on Folk ’n’ Hell enters the snow-caked world of November (2017), Rainer Sarnet’s monochrome masterpiece of Estonian folklore and unrequited love. Adapted from Andrus Kivirähk’s novel, it is part fairy tale, part fever dream, and, depending on your tolerance for mud and magic, possibly the most beautiful film ever made about utter poverty.

The trio sink their boots into the film’s strange logic and haunting tone. In this medieval village, peasants barter their souls to the devil to build Kratts, creatures cobbled together from tools and bones that do their bidding. The dead dine with the living on All Souls’ Night, wolves roam the woods, and love becomes the cruellest magic of all. At its heart lies Lena, who adores Hans, who in turn is besotted with the Baron’s unnamed daughter. The result is a love triangle soaked in soot and longing, filmed in stark black and white that turns every frame into a living etching.

The hosts revel in the film’s rich mix of absurdity and allegory: peasants eating bark and soap, nobles decaying in empty grandeur, and the devil himself arriving like an Estonian Brian Blessed. Beneath the filth and humour lies a sharp reflection on faith, class, and survival. For all its surreal touches, talking snowmen, flying cows, and trousers worn on heads to ward off plague, November feels deeply human. Its horror is not in monsters or blood but in the endless grind of existence and the futility of desire.

Is it folk horror? The gang debate the question with uncharacteristic earnestness. While it may lack jump scares or creeping dread, November is steeped in folklore, environmental menace, and spiritual decay. It earns a unanimous 9 out of 10, the highest rating in Folk ’n’ Hell history, and a heartfelt recommendation even for those who usually avoid horror altogether. Shot through with humour, sorrow, and snowy beauty, November proves that folk horror can be tender, tragic, and strangely uplifting all at once.

Watch the film, listen to the chatter, and decide for yourself whether this tale of love, magic, and mud deserves its place among the genre’s finest.

🎬 Film: November (2017)

🎥 Director: Rainer Sarnet

📚 Based on: Rehepapp ehk November by Andrus Kivirähk

🔗 Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

🔗 Visit the FolknHell website for more episodes and blog posts

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
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A mother and daughter rock band film themselves into witchcraft legend. Hellbender (2021) is the Adams family’s lockdown-born tale of spells, riffs, and rebellion, brewed in the forests of upstate New York. FolknHell dives into its homemade horror, punk-fuelled ambition, and questionable folk credentials, asking what really happens when cabin fever meets black magic.

Shot at the family home during the pandemic, Hellbender is a curious mix of family therapy, DIY filmmaking, and teenage witch fantasy. Mum Toby Poser, dad John Adams, and daughters Zelda and Lulu share writing, directing, editing, and acting duties, creating a home-spun brew of coming-of-age angst and occult awakening. The result is part music video, part family art project, and part fanged parable about isolation, appetite, and inherited power.

The story follows Izzy, a teenage girl kept away from civilisation by her mother, who insists she is ill. In reality, both are witches, members of a near-extinct line called Hellbenders who feed on fear to grow stronger. When Izzy meets a local girl and tastes her first worm, the magic takes hold, triggering a gory self-discovery that sets her against her protective, equally dangerous mother. What begins as a bond between two outsiders becomes a slow collision of maternal control and adolescent rebellion, shot through with buzzing guitars and pine-forest mysticism.

As always, the trio pull the film apart to test whether it truly belongs in the folk horror coven. Andy admires the ambition and momentum despite rough edges. Dave Houghton recognises the charm but points out the uneven tone that comes from four directors working on alternate days. David Hall argues that while witchcraft lies at the genre’s heart, Hellbender lacks the rural community and ancestral dread that define true folk horror. Instead, it is a modern fairy tale about power, parenting, and punk spirit, more Sabrina than The Wicker Man.

They discuss the film’s resourceful but patchy visual effects, improvised dialogue, and lighting that sometimes turns homemade into half-haunted. With only two main characters, the supposed isolation feels more like lockdown necessity than mythic setting. The music, provided by the family’s own band, adds drive but not always menace, leading to a film that fascinates more than it frightens.

Scoring the film out of 30, the panel agree on its good intentions but modest success. Andy gives it five, David Hall three and a half, and Dave Houghton three, for a total of eleven and a half. All agree that the Adams family’s spirit and imagination outstrip their resources, but that Hellbender’s claim to folk horror status relies more on marketing than merit.

Still, there is admiration for the effort. Making a feature film from scratch during lockdown deserves respect, even if the cauldron bubbles over. The trio conclude that Hellbender might be more of a family diary in disguise, a story about creativity and confinement rather than ancient rites or rural terror.

Join in and raise a glass (and an eyebrow) to the Adams family’s DIY witchery, ponder whether feeding on fear ever pays off, and debate once more the immortal question: Is it really folk horror?

🔗 Visit the FolknHell website for more episodes and blog posts

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
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In this episode of FolknHell, Andy, Dave, and David take on Azrael (2024), Simon Barrett and E.L. Katz’s tense, wordless horror starring Samara Weaving. Set after the Rapture, the film drops us into a mute Christian fundamentalist cult who have severed their vocal cords in pursuit of purity, and the fiery “burned ones” who stalk the forests around them. Azrael herself is caught in a relentless cycle of capture, escape, and pursuit, with blood rituals, underground tunnels, and a climactic birth scene that veers into the demonic.

The trio weigh up the film’s survivalist atmosphere, its biblical overtones, and the striking choice to dispense almost entirely with dialogue. They explore whether the film’s rustling woods, mute cult, and sacrificial rites amount to genuine folk horror or whether these are merely borrowed tropes designed to ride the current wave of folk horror popularity.

Discussion ranges from the unexplained “mysterious winds” that herald the burned ones, to comparisons with The Descent and Mad Max, to the confusing symbolism of Azrael’s apparent satisfaction at a demonic child’s birth. While the group acknowledge the film’s tense pacing and some striking imagery, they find its folk horror credentials thin, its theology muddled, and its climax more frustrating than fulfilling.

In the end, the panel agree that Azrael is a lean, often gripping chase horror, but one that fails to root itself in the earthy authenticity that defines the folk horror tradition. Their final score of 11 out of 30 marks the lowest yet on the podcast, with Andy defending its visceral thrills while Dave and David knock it down for cheapness, repetition, and lack of genuine folk resonance.

For those curious, Azrael is worth a watch for its atmosphere, unusual silence, and brisk 86-minute runtim, just don’t expect the folkloric depths its marketing suggests.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22173666/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_6_nm_2_in_0_q_Azreal

Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/azrael

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azrael_(film)

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

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In this episode of Folk ’n’ Hell, Andy, David, and Dave dive into Laurin (1989), Robert Sigl’s German oddity that blurs the line between fairy tale, Hammer horror homage, and supernatural thriller. Set in a rural village where children begin to vanish, the film follows nine-year-old Laurin as she receives visions from spirits, guiding her towards the unsettling truth: the schoolmaster, returned from military service, is a predatory murderer.

The trio wrestle with the film’s esoteric storytelling and oblique structure, noting how its dreamlike quality lends it a fairy-tale atmosphere. From the heavily saturated reds and 1960s Hammer-inspired visuals to the claustrophobic compression of the village setting, Laurin dazzles visually even as its narrative proves difficult to pin down. The group debate whether it truly counts as folk horror, weighing it against their three criteria: isolated rural community (yes), threat from the environment (no), and menace rooted in folklore (no). While Andy makes a case for including it in the wider folk horror canon alongside films like The Anchoress and Flower of Evil, Dave and David see it more as a supernatural coming-of-age story with horror-adjacent leanings.

The discussion touches on gender roles, psychological trauma, and the protective presence of Laurin’s mother’s spirit, symbolised by a haunting musical box. The trio also find humour in the hard-drinking grandmother and the mercifully short runtime, which keeps the film from becoming too heavy. Ultimately, Laurin scores 14 out of 30, the lowest rating so far, admired for its atmosphere but criticised for its lack of narrative clarity and folk horror credentials.

If you’re curious about obscure Euro-horror curiosities, artistic Hammer-style visuals, or cult supernatural tales that sit awkwardly on the folk horror shelf, Laurin may well be worth your time. But be warned: it is as baffling as it is beautiful.

🔗 Visit the FolknHell website for more episodes and blog posts

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.