Tag Archives: folk horror

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CAPSULE: RABBIT TRAP (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Bryn Chainey

FEATURING: Dev Patel, Rosy McEwen, Jade Croot

PLOT: In the Welsh countryside, the lives of a musician and sound engineer are interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child imbued with supernatural awareness.

Still from Rabbit Trap (2025)

COMMENTS: They emerge from the Welsh countryside, bearing questions and a rabbit offering. They know the purpose of plants and the dangers they can keep at bay—or entice. They coming knocking with joy, and with fervor. They wonder at a strange man in his 30s, who apologizes a lot even while he may tackle an unsuspecting kid.

The film is set in the mid-1970s. The man is Darcy Davenport (Dev Patel), a sound engineer married to underground music sensation Daphne. For reasons omitted, they’re deeply out of the way of any neighbors, exploring each other, sonic phenomena, and melancholia. Darcy spends his days wandering about with his boom mic and recorder in hand; Daphne futzes around with microphones, synthesizers, and oscilloscopes, trying to craft something interesting. Enter small child. This child, the “they” mentioned above, is ambiguous in a number of ways. They’re boyish, girlish, a bit unearthly—indeed, no other pronoun would suit them, and perhaps no proper noun, either, as they never reveal their name. Events turn strange as the group—in varying ones, pairs, and trios—explore sounds, visions, faerie rings, and even more terrible dangers of the woodland.

The denouement suggests we may have witnessed a metaphor, but in the spirit of the film’s general turbidity, I will merely mention that it is there, and that I shan’t be scrutinizing events further. Chainey has achieved something impressive through his story, as has Jade Croot with their performance: summoning a deep well of mystery, uneasiness, and candid emotion. The hazards of Nature where it straddles the veil are frightening and glorious, and Rabbit Trap‘s dangers should be approached with an open mind—and open ears.

 

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a vague but effectively unsettling slice of trip-folk horror about what happens when the world refuses to leave… Equal parts Ben Wheatley’s ‘In the Earth’ and Jerzy Skolomowski’s ‘The Shout,’ ‘Rabbit Trap’ is the sort of experience that could be better explained by certain mushrooms than even even the most detailed internet explainer. It’s definitely the sort of experience that’s best enjoyed by accepting those terms as soon as you can.”–David Ehrlich, IndieWire (contemporaneous)

Rabbit Trap [Blu-ray]

Rabbit Trap [Blu-ray]

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  • “Particularly Frightening and Very Haunting” – Slashfilm

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Capsules

ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR, VOLUME 2

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Severin Films. 13 disc set.

Severin Films continues their groundbreaking folk-horror “college course in a box” set with the second semester. Expanding and exploring on themes and offering more selections to discover and debate, this time around it has 24 features representing 18 countries, along with tons of extras. Acknowledging the literary roots of the genre, Vol. 2 also comes with a 250 page book, “A Folk Horror Storybook,” a collection of 12 short stories by noted writers in the genre—Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Cassandra Khaw amongst them—with an introduction by Kier-La Janisse, who returns as producer/curator of the whole shebang. The “expansion of themes” may cause some to feel cheated, as there are only a handful of films that fit the expected parameters of “horror” here. But that objection may be more of a failing of the viewer. There are elements of the frightful in all of the selections, and although perhaps  “uncanny” or “spectral” would be better terms, “horror” makes for a good umbrella.

Still from To Fire You Come At Last (2023)
To Fire You Come At Last

Disc 1 features the UK with a film by writer Sean (“England’s Screaming”) Hogan, To Fire You Come At Last (2023), a knowing homage to BBC shows like “Dead of Night” and “Ghost Stories For Christmas.” Four men carry a coffin to a graveyard along a “corpse road” and encounter dangers: from each other, and from something else. Bonus features include commentary by Hogan and producers, along with an earlier short by Hogan, “We Always Find Ourselves In The Sea,” also with commentary, and a separate featurette on corpse roads.

Paired with To Fire is Psychomania, a 1973 B-movie by Don Sharp involving juvenile delinquent bikers whose leader (Nicky Henson from Witchfinder General) learns the secret of returning from the dead—and promptly does it! He then starts recruiting the other members to follow suit. There’s witchery/devil/frog worship, George Sanders (in his last role), a sappy ballad, and lots of cycle action, making for some fine British cheese. This was a previous Severin release with featurettes about the actors and music, all which have been ported over, along with a new commentary by Hellebore Magazine editor Maria J. Perez Cuervo and a new short documentary on stone circles and standing stones.

Disc 2 focuses on two American features: The Enchanted (1984) with Julius Harris and Larry Miller (acting under the name Will Sennet), directed by Carter Lord, and 1973’s Who Fears The Devil? (AKA The Legend of Hillbilly John), with Hedges Capers and Severn Darden, directed by John Newland. Based on a story by Elizabeth Coatsworth, Continue reading ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR, VOLUME 2 →

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366 UNDERGROUND: THE SUDBURY DEVIL (2023)

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The Sudbury Devil can be rented or purchased on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Andrew Rakich

FEATURING: Benton Guinness, , Josh Popa, Matthew Van Gessell, Kendra Unique

PLOT: In 1678, 2 years after King Philip’s War, two Puritan witch hunters from Boston, John Fletcher (Guinness) and Josiah Cutting (Popa), are sent to a town in the Massachusetts sticks to investigate allegations of witchcraft and deviltry in the nearby woods by Isaac Goodenow (Van Guessel), where they encounter Patience Gavett (Gregg) and her companion Flora (Unique).

Still from "The Sudbury Devil" (2023)

COMMENTS: American folk horror is an established genre in literature, but it hasn’t quite made the jump to movies or television to the extent that its British cousins have. Outside of adaptations of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works (“The House of the Seven Gables”, “Young Goodman Brown” to name a couple), ‘s Eyes of Fire is probably the film people would point to, along with Ravenous and The Witch.1

The Sudbury Devil is a good addition to that slim lineup, and even more impressive for accomplishing what it does on its budget; of the films mentioned, it’s certainly the one that qualifies as microbudgeted, and it makes the most of its available resources.

If you mashed up A Field in England with Ravenous and The Witch,  you’d get The Sudbury Devil. It’s more than apparent that director/writer Rakich is a hardcore fan of the aforementioned films, and it’s to his and his cast and crew’s credit to have produced a film which goes further than its predecessors, as proper Hellspawn should.

Director/writer/actor Andrew Rakich is known for his Atun-Shei YouTube page, where he utilizes his knowledge and interest in history—he was a ‘living historian’ at Gettysburg National Military Park and a New Orleans tour guide—to produce work that amuses and informs. Starting from highlighting sites and events in New Orleans, he progressed to a Civil War series, “Checkmate, Lincolnites!”, which takes on the mythology of the South’s “Lost Cause” propaganda in entertaining fashion. Entertaining here means comedic, which makes sense; hard and unflattering truths tend to be accepted easier if there’s a laugh or joke involved, and once hooked, thinking can begin (ask filmmaker .) The same effect can be obtained by replacing laughs and jokes with dread and horror in Sudbury (although there is a touch of black humor in what the filmmakers describe as a “mischievous indictment of America’s foundational rot”).

As Sudbury lays it out, hypocrisy is at the heart of that rot. The justification of King Phillip’s War, which eradicated much of the indigenous population of New England, still weighs heavily on Fletcher in his nightmares. The “piety” of Cutting and Reverend Russell allows their disdain of women (specifically Patience). Russell supports  Mosley’s Company and the war, despite actively avoiding any involvement in it. Cutting dsiplays racism towards the original inhabitants of the land and towards Flora, despite his attraction.

While sex has always been a part of folk horror, it’s usually presented obliquely rather than directly. Sudbury puts it upfront: polyamory, homoeroticism, masturbation, gender-shifting, and even a climatic double penetration (although not in the way that you might expect.) Sex and sexual freedom is usually presented as aligned with devilry in folk horror, though Sudbury subverts that expectation.

In that sense, Sudbury is not only folk horror, but also a subset of what could be termed ‘Woke Horror’ (Get Out, Us, Harvest Lake, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster). This vein of film includes the works of , ‘s The People Under the Stairs (1991), and others; a long established tradition, so ‘Woke Horror’ isn’t such a new thing after all.

The Sudbury Devil will be available on VOD today, December 21—in time for Xmas!— on Rakich’s website, Atun-Shei Films. Other related work that may help in understanding the nuances of the film (King Phillip’ War, Sudbury area history, and specifics in the film) can be viewed there and on YouTube, as well as the webseries Checkmate, Lincolnites and The Witchfinder General, a lighter look at Puritanism. A physical media release may also happen sometime in 2024.

A note of interest for those literary horror aficionados who notice the name Tabitha King as an executive producer: yes, it is that Tabitha King (novelist and wife of an obscure writer named Stephen King). As Rakich explained in the Pod 366 interview, she is also a noted genealogist and had heard about the production and contributed to it.

Listen to our interview with Andrew Rakich and producer Veronika Payton about The Sudbury Devil.

  1. I’m certain there will be “That Guy” who pops in with some titles not named. That’s a protracted discussion for another time, after Vol. 2 of “All the Haunts Be Ours” is released… ↩︎
Capsules

CAPSULE: ENYS MEN (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Mark Jenkin

FEATURING: Mary Woodvine

PLOT: A solitary observer notes the progression of floral growth on a craggy coastal island whose tragic history begins to manifest.

COMMENTS: The heavy winds over the spit of land in the sea, the endless break of water on the rocky surf, and the defiant upright glowering of a singular plinth are the entire world of the unnamed observer in Mark Jenkin’s contemplative Cornish horror film, Enys Men. There were once, we eventually learn, others on this island, but through the repetition of our observer’s days, tasks, and rituals, it becomes clear that a horrific double-tragedy doomed this island to be nothing more than the playground for gusts, seabirds, and a lonesome botanist.

Days, tasks, and rituals: these are the concepts Jenkin explores, hoping (perhaps) to better understand the intersection of self, geography, and history. The days are clear enough. They’d probably happen without us, without Jenkin’s island observer. But she is there, chronicling the growth—actually, chronicling the growth of the growth; for days, she marks one species of jaunty flower “no change.” Observing these plants is one of her daily tasks, a break-down of the day into what needs to be accomplished. Alongside these chronicles, she reads the soil temperature and… and beyond that, it is unclear. What fills the rest of the observer’s days are rituals. After each reading, she drops a stone down a grated shaft, waiting to hear its distant thud. She reads a survival manual. She listens to a radio. And day after day, as the tasks and rituals go by, there is “no change.”

Until one day, there is. Enys Men is a film whose narrative, if you haven’t guessed by now, teeters on the abstract. Onscreen flashes, largely incoherent, like sidelong memories jutting into the periphery of your thoughts, hint both at the observer’s history, and the island’s. An “in memoriam” plaque lists landsmen and mariners who died attempting to save other doomed souls. The change in the flora correlates to a change in the observer’s rituals, when she accidentally discovers another piece of the land’s history, in the form of a nearly buried rail-track, and a long-forgotten sign from a visiting vessel.

The observer’s mind doesn’t deteriorate, per se, but adjusts to the steady rhythm and landscape she is living in. The past—hers and the island’s—are represented cyclically, as opposed to linearly. A lichen arrived on the flowers, and it begins to claim the observer. Tying her closer to her domain, the flora unmoors her falsely anchored perception. Her memories, and the island’s memories, intermingle, come and go with the rhythmic flow of the surrounding ocean, and flit to the whims of the coastal winds as her self, and the island, slip further into the cosmic tide.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Things don’t “add up.” That’s fine with me. I was riveted by every moment of this haunting weird film. ‘Enys Men’ made me legitimately uneasy. ” – Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com (contemporaneous) (contemporaneous)

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FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: , , 

FEATURING: Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams

PLOT: A scrappy family trio travel Depression-era Catskills pursue an ascension into big time carnival show-biz, all while executing harsh justice.

Still from Where the Devil Roams (2023)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It probably shouldn’t—if not for that final shot. My goodness.

COMMENTS: Dark times bring forth dark magic in this meditative and macabre motion picture from the renowned indie horror team the Adams Family. They entered our collective awareness with The Deeper You Dig, knocked off socks (and knocked out ear-balls) with the metal-infused follow-up Hellbender, and gloriously return once more with Where the Devil Roams. Tobey, John, Zelda, and Lulu continue to hone their craft as a family-filmmaking team (and unlike the Ormonds, these are fun-time, fun-filming folk). Their “tiny” movie explores big ideas, delivers big gore, and proves to have a big heart beating at its tattered core.

The slow death of the carnival business grinds down the poor carnies of upstate New York, perhaps none more so than Maggie, Seven, and their daughter Eve. This trio aspire to earn a place at the “Buffalo Horror Show,” the last remaining big to-do in the circuit. While traveling along with their bare-bones circus group, they drop in on various ill-doers—a cruel landlord, a crooked financier—smiting the enemies of the little man with a smiling viciousness. Maggie wields the weapon, Seven speaks the scripture, and Eve, born mute, captures their handiwork on camera with a quiet relish.

Taking a moment to consider the inputs for this film—third- and fourth-hand props and costumes, self made sets, musical chairs camerawork (who ever was not in a frame at the time was typically behind the lens), and the mystical fusion of American myth with homemade magick—the film is impressive. But then, it feels impressive even without that qualifier. I mention those elements to share how much heart and soul went into this little wonder; and that’s not mentioning the blood. Papa Seven cannot abide further carnage after his time as a medic in WWI, so Mama Maggie applies his blindfold before the blood and fury. These grisly doings are a grisly delight: either through the sheer bluntness of a chiming skillet, or a deadly harpooning with a fire poker, it’s always fun to watch these righteous murderers. And with the black magic tied in (heh), there is an unreal aura whose moral ambiguity becomes darker and darker.

The image gets a bit dark, too, and strange: beginning in a full-palette, it flickers and devolves into grainy, black-and-white harshness. By the end, as the family’s already meager fortunes collapse (along with a couple of their bodies), we enter a saturated, white-light nightmare.

Which brings me to the punchline. In the penultimate shot, our heroine Eve has transformed from an angel of light to one of darkness, who escorts an unknown entity down one of those looong corridors typically reserved for nightmares. With a reassuring bend of her finger, she beckons to her follower, along with us, to go through the final door to end stage. A song emerges from her lacquered lips, a spotlight jolts into life, and BAM!

Listen to Giles Edwards’ interview with the Adams family about Where the Devil Roams.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a conscious homage to early cinema traditions… Formally, the film is audacious, again pulling off stylistic flourishes that in the hands of less confident, skilled filmmakers could feel hokey or cliched.”–Alexandra Heller-Nicolas, AWFG.org (festival screening)