Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror

The first film directed by genre scholar and writer Kier-La Janisse, this documentary surveys the cinematic history of folk horror across more than three hours, drawing on over a hundred films and more than fifty interviewees. Its first part is devoted to what the genre calls its unholy trinity: Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan's Claw and The Wicker Man. From there it moves through the form's proliferation on British television and then to its culturally specific manifestations in other countries, opening up paganism, feminism, ecology, landscape and the politics of folk nostalgia. Interviewees include the director of Blood on Satan's Claw, Robert Eggers of The Witch, and scholars who have written books on the subject, alongside archival interviews with the director and writer of The Wicker Man, neither of whom was alive during production. The collage work was done by the Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. The irony Variety identified sums up the film's own problem: folk horror is a relatively new term, and the more hours the documentary spends defining it, the wider the term gets. It won the Audience Award at SXSW and Best Documentary at Fantasia and Nashville, and holds a hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes across forty reviews. Who it's for: Anyone wanting a deep dive into horror history who enjoys leaving with a longer watchlist. Who it's not for: Not for those seeking a short, tidy introduction, since as one critic noted the film cannot avoid repetition at this length.