FolknHell

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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.

Scores

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

Links To Add

• YouTube episode: [ADD LINK]
• FolknHell Film Page: https://www.folknhell.com/hereditary-review
• FolknHell Transcript Page: https://www.folknhell.com/hereditary-transcript
• FolknHell Editorial Article: [ADD FINAL ARTICLE URL]
• TMDb: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/493922-hereditary?language=en-GB
• Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/hereditary/
• 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

Content Warning

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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: 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.

Episode Description

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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.

Scores

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

Links To Add

• Acast episode: [ADD URL]
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• FolknHell Film Page: [ADD URL]
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• IMDb
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Content Warning

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:

• YouTube: @folknhell
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

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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.

Full Episode Description

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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.

Score

• Total: 15/30

Links to more

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• FolknHell Transcript Page: [ADD URL]
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• IMDb
• TMDb
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• Wikipedia

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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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.

Full Episode Description

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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.

Scores

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

Links

• YouTube episode
• FolknHell Film Page
• FolknHell Transcript Page
• 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/

Content Warning

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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: 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.

Full Episode Description

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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.

FolknHell Score

29 out of 30

• Give us your score and any other thoughts on the film Rose Of Nevada here
• For more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next visit https://www.folknhell.com/

Links To More

• YouTube episode
• FolknHell Film Page
• FolknHell Transcript Page
• Rose of Nevada: Folk Horror Where The Past Comes Back To Work
• TMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia

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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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.

Full Episode Description

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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

🔗 Give us your score and share your thoughts on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre here

🔗 Visit http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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

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

🔗 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:

• YouTube: @folknhell
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

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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.

Full Episode Description

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.

FolknHell Verdict

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:

• YouTube: @folknhell
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

Full Description

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?

FolknHell Verdict

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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• TMDb
• Rotten Tomatoes

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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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.

Final verdict

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

Scores

FolknHell score: 15 out of 30

• Give us your score and any other thoughts on the film Hokum here
• For more review, discussions and ideas on which folk horror film to watch next visit https://www.folknhell.com/

Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Find us on the socials:

• YouTube: @folknhell
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

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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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🔗Visit http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

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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.

Full Description

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

🔗Give us your score and share your thoughts on Night Of The Demon here

🔗Visit http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
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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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🔗Visit http://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

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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 http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

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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.

“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.

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 https://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

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

🔗Visit http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

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Sator is what happens when you leave one filmmaker alone in the woods for seven years with a camera, a toolbox, and a grudge against comfort. Jordan Graham does practically everything here, including dragging planks up a mountain and building the actual cabin, which explains why the film feels less like a set and more like a place you should not be standing in after sundown.

The plot is deliberately chewy and we all agree it is the sort of story that fully clicks after a couple of watches. Adam tries to isolate himself from the forest spirit Sator, but keeps coming back to Nonna’s tapes and automatic writing like it is a hotline to the thing itself. The family dynamic is grim, the dialogue is minimal, and the whole film runs on dread, creaks, and the awful feeling that the dark outside is slowly pushing its way in.

Dave is in awe of how good it looks, especially for something essentially built by one person, and he calls out the atmosphere as “almost suffocating”. Andy leans into the film student energy and the big influences, with Tarkovsky creeping into the imagery and the format switching adding to that dream logic unease. David gets the chills from the soundscape, describing it as a constant videogame style warning siren that never stops chanting at you.

We also spend a good chunk trying to untangle what the cult is, who is sacrificing who, and why the film underplays its biggest shocks so casually. The standout moment for all of us is the woman tied to the tree and what happens next, which lands like a punch precisely because the film refuses to make a big song and dance about it. Then we get distracted, as we always do, by the deer caller, instantly upgraded to the now canonical phrase: “a deer kazoo”.

Folk horror verdict: triple tick. Isolated people, ancient woods, rotten rituals, and old beliefs refusing to die quietly. This one is proper horror, and we all agree watching it alone is a deeply questionable life choice. “If it doesn’t scare you, you’re not human.”

FolknHell final score: 24 out of 30

Folknhell is the folk horror podcast where Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall dig into strange cinema, argue about whether it really counts as folk horror, and score every film out of 30.

Add your own score and comments about the films at https://www.folknhell.com/scores

Find us on the socials:

• YouTube: @folknhell
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FolknHell Score

21 out of 30

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

🔗Visit http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

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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

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

🔗Visit http://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
• Facebook: FolknHell
• X: @FolknHell
• Bluesky: FolknHell

See acast.com/privacy for info.

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.