FolknHell

Night Ot The Demon

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 Carswell, 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. Final score: 25 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 [https://www.folknhell.com/scores ] Find us on the socials: * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6R1z2tHvPlreKCkoCuFECQ]: @folknhell * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/folknhell/]: FolknHell * X [https://x.com/FolknHell]: @FolknHell * Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/folknhell.bsky.social]: FolknHell See acast.com/privacy for info. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Men

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. Final score: 15 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 [https://www.folknhell.com/scores ] Find us on the socials: * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6R1z2tHvPlreKCkoCuFECQ]: @folknhell * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/folknhell/]: FolknHell * X [https://x.com/FolknHell]: @FolknHell * Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/folknhell.bsky.social]: FolknHell See acast.com/privacy for info. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The Wicker Man

Bright sunshine, folk songs and communal sex should not feel this menacing. The Wicker Man still manages the neat trick of looking almost cheerful while marching straight towards one of horror’s most unforgettable endings. A policeman, a pagan island, and one of the most famous endings in horror cinema. Andy, Dave and David head to Summerisle for The Wicker Man and get into its strange musical spell, its battle of belief systems, and the question of whether this is still the defining folk horror film or simply the most iconic. Andy finally gets to bring his favourite film to the table, which means The Wicker Man gets both passionate defence and a bit of healthy resistance. The conversation digs into the film’s odd balancing act as mystery, musical and folk horror landmark, with all three hosts agreeing that its horror is less about constant dread and more about the awful certainty of where it is heading. They get stuck into Sergeant Howie as a devout Christian outsider blundering into a community whose beliefs he cannot understand and cannot tolerate. That clash between rigid authority and pagan ritual becomes the heart of the discussion, alongside the film’s use of masks, fertility rites, sacrifice and isolation. There is also a lively debate over the old folk horror test: threat of the land, isolated community, ancient origins. David pushes back on just how ancient Summerisle’s traditions really are, while Andy and Dave argue that the film still absolutely earns its place as one of the genre’s founding texts. The mood swings between admiration, nerdy detail and a fair bit of filth, with talk of diegetic music, topiary penises, Brit Ekland’s famous not quite Brit Ekland scene, and the various cuts of the film. The final verdict is clear enough though. Whatever quibbles they have about age, pacing or how “horror” it really is, this is still folk horror royalty. Final score: 24.5 out of 30. Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30. Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores [https://www.folknhell.com/scores ] Find us on the socials: * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6R1z2tHvPlreKCkoCuFECQ]: @folknhell * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/folknhell/]: FolknHell * X [https://x.com/FolknHell]: @FolknHell * Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/folknhell.bsky.social]: FolknHell See acast.com/privacy for info. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

A Dark Song

A house sealed in salt is already a bad sign. Spending a year inside it with grief, lies and ceremonial magic makes it worse. FolknHell tackles A Dark Song: grief, ritual magic, guardian angels, and whether this eerie occult chamber piece counts as folk horror. The film is Liam Gavin’s 2016 occult chamber piece about a grieving mother, Sophia, who hires the abrasive Henry Solomon to guide her through an elaborate ritual based on The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. What starts as a bid to speak to her dead child slowly reveals itself as something angrier, riskier and much more spiritually costly. > “It gives you a peek at the architecture of the universe.” The conversation leans hard into what makes the film work so well. Andy, Dave and David love the stripped back set-up, the claustrophobic house, the drip feed of uncanny detail, and the way the film makes magic feel dangerous without ever tipping into anything daft. They spend plenty of time on the relationship between Sophia and Solomon, which shifts from mistrust and hostility into a bleak sort of dependence, with Catherine Walker and Steve Oram getting a lot of praise for carrying almost the whole film between them. > “It’s not what she wants, but it is what she needs.” There is some debate over whether it fully fits the FolknHell folk horror test. It does not neatly match every rule, but the ancient ritual, total isolation, occult Christianity and growing sense of being trapped inside a logic you do not understand push it firmly into folk horror adjacent territory, before Andy finally plants his flag and calls it folk horror anyway. > “A house sealed in salt and a ritual built on lies is never going to end well.” The big takeaway is that this is one of the highest rated films the hosts have covered so far. They single out the cigarette smoking appearance of Death, the astonishing guardian angel reveal, and the unexpectedly redemptive ending as moments that genuinely stick in the mind. Final score: 23 out of 30. Enjoyed this film too? Add your own score and comments for the film at https://www.folknhell.com/scores [https://www.folknhell.com/scores] Also Referenced in this episode * The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage * Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn * Aleister Crowley * Samuel MacGregor Mathers * Kabbalah * Hermes * Candyman * The Wicker Man * Midsommar * John Constantine * Clive Barker Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30. Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores [https://www.folknhell.com/scores ] Find us on the socials: * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6R1z2tHvPlreKCkoCuFECQ]: @folknhell * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/folknhell/]: FolknHell * X [https://x.com/FolknHell]: @FolknHell * Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/folknhell.bsky.social]: FolknHell See acast.com/privacy for info. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

In The Earth

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. [https://folknhell.com/episodes] 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 [https://www.folknhell.com/scores ] Find us on the socials: * YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6R1z2tHvPlreKCkoCuFECQ]: @folknhell * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/folknhell/]: FolknHell * X [https://x.com/FolknHell]: @FolknHell * Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/folknhell.bsky.social]: FolknHell See acast.com/privacy for info. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.