Rewilding is a folk horror anthology written and directed by Ric Rawlins. It includes three short films, “Stone Mothers,” “The Family Tree,” and “The Writer’s Enquiry” that all harken back to the stories of M. R. James and to their adaptation in the 1970s’ BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series. The influence of James is especially strong in the first two, with “Stone Mothers” evoking “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” and “A Warning to the Curious,” while “The Family Tree” recalls “The Ash Tree.” The third installment, “The Writer’s Enquiry,” which has a brilliant ending, most definitely manifests the influence of Robin Hardy’s 1973 The Wicker Man – and is also akin to the recent “Mr. King” episode of Inside No. 9 (2022).
Any film that was so aware of tracing the influences of the tradition from which it emerged would be of interest to me – but that is by no means the only reason I highly recommend Rewilding. It is essential viewing for anyone interested in folk horror – or in slow-burn, thoughtful horror more generally. Each of the three short films is extremely well-written and directed; the settings are gorgeous, beautifully shot, and, in true folk horror fashion, contribute demonstrably to the meaning of the film; and the actors are all great. Rawlins obviously assembled a dedicated group for this project, and their investment in what they’re doing is palpable.
The beach in “Stone Mothers”
The title – Rewilding – says much about what the three short films have in common. They all open with scenes that are distinctly not “wild”: two people walking on a beach and then an archaeologist digging and making notes on a coastal headland; a woman arriving at a remote rental house in order to study a nearby tree for a book she’s writing; and a journalist driving to a rural village to collect “spooky” local color ghost stories for the Halloween edition of his paper. These openings center not just mundanity but a modern detachment from both the rural space and its traditions. All three main characters – the archaeologist of “Stone Mothers,” the writer of “The Family Tree,” and the journalist of “The Writer’s Enquiry” – are outsiders. They have all come to these rural communities to study them – to study stones, trees, and local supernatural lore. They arrive and stay in pubs, rentals, and locals’ homes – markedly not part of the community they’re studying. In all three short films, then, we have the classic conflict of folk horror: the modern (often skeptical, often urban, always rational) outsider enters a rural and distinctly more “superstitious” rural village. In other words, the mundane and the “wild.”
from “The Writer’s Enquiry”
The “rewilding” of the title marks precisely the move in each short film from mundanity to something “wild” – and in all three films the “rewilding” is constituted by an interwoven mixture of nature, local folklore, and the supernatural. The term “rewilding” is perhaps most closely associated with George Monbiot and his manifesto for “rewilding” in the sense of what he calls “the mass restoration of ecosystems” – a rewilding that offers “an opportunity to reverse the destruction of the natural world.”[i] Rawlins’ film certainly, to a degree, takes up “rewilding” in this sense. I would say that the film is not about restoring the “wild” but seeing it. All three short films center both narratively and visually on aspects of nature that have been left to languish in the background: a cave, a tree, a field. But these short films make us look – really look – at these taken-for-granted parts of nature. When we really look, we see them in all their strangeness. “Stone Mothers” opens with a young woman walking up the beach to a cave, looking in, and then screaming in horror. What weird and terrifying things does nature have to show us – when we really look – when we really look at caves, trees, and fields?
But the “rewilding” represented by these short films is not only about nature but also about the ways in which nature has become interwoven with folk tales and traditions and even the supernatural itself. This kind of “wild” flickers into view especially in “Stone Mothers” and “The Family Tree,” as we get glimpses of the existence of anther realm beyond the tangible world in which we habitually live. But do we really glimpse the supernatural or is it just a matter of folk belief, some might say superstition? Does the “wild” of the supernatural realm actually exist – mostly invisibly – or do we create it, often in destructive ways, by believing in it, by our own fallible and “wild” imagination?
The uncanny tree in “Family Tree”
“Stone Mothers” is the film that takes up the question of belief most directly. After the village priest, Father Hallow (Daniel Charles Doherty), asks the archaeologist to explore the claim that “the devil” inhabits the local sea cave, and the archaeologist goes on to talk about the long tradition of belief in the devil, the priest warns him that, “The devil is not historic if you’re a believer.” Father Hallow, indeed, worries not about the devil himself but “the fever of the devil.” “Some villagers have a very active imagination,” he continues. As the film ends – and not well for the outsider-archaeologist – it’s unclear whether there are those in the village who believe in the “devil” (some deity that inhabits the cave), or whether they are just prone, in their own fevered belief, to suspect too quickly that others are devil-worshippers, a longstanding human predilection that led, of course, to centuries of witch-hunting. The “rewilding” of “Stone Mothers,” then, is multiple: there’s what the cave itself might offer, and there’s also the archaeologist’s encounter with the “wildness” of local folklore, superstition, and a “fevered” belief in the abiding presence of the devil.
The protagonist-writers of “The Family Tree” and “The Writer’s Enquiry” similarly uncover the “wildness” of rural life, the strange secrets underlying the parochial and even aggressive “normality” of appearances. Significantly, what each writer discovers centers on burials – an important trope of folk horror, in which things – artifacts, bones – are frequently unearthed, only to bring often fatal consequences to those who excavated them. Both “The Family Tree” and “The Writer’s Enquiry” do something a bit different with burials, however – to extremely intriguing effect. Indeed, one could say that things are buried (or reburied) in Rewilding, rather than being unburied – and each burial involves intriguing and quite different kinds of communal ritual.
Part of the ritual of “The Writer’s Enquiry”
In short, then, Rewilding is great folk horror storytelling – rooted in its tradition but offering something distinctly new and provocative in each of its short films.
Here’s the trailer:
I conducted a brief interview with writer and director Ric Rawlins about the influences that shaped his storytelling in Rewilding – and on the importance of the film’s locations – an interview you can find below.
What were your principal influences as you conceived of and made this film?
When I was 20 I worked just around the corner from the British Museum and the occult bookshop Atlantis, and I would sometimes visit both in my lunch breaks. I think that was perhaps the origin of the film – this was back in 2000. I read a lot about the birth of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardener and so on – not as a potential practitioner but more out of historical interest. It’s fascinating whether or not Gardener really did meet that witch cult in the New Forest, or whether he was just an extravagant storyteller.
Either way, all this gave me pause for thought about a spiritual dimension to nature, and the mystery at the heart of our heritage: all those great stone circles and nobody really knows why they’re there.
So, the film really comes out of an interest in the juxtaposition – and sometimes friction – between our pagan and Christian histories, and the question of whether we should try to “solve” religious history, like a puzzle. There’s a cave in Cheddar that was found to only reveal its wall art when the sunlight passed through a hole at a certain time: I love natural riddles like this, and also the strange combination of fear and reverence they inspire.
Cinematically I was of course inspired by The Wicker Man, The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General! When you’re making an English film, you don’t want to imitate Hollywood, but neither do you want to fall into a cliché of what an English film is – period drama, social realist, London gangster etc. So, although folk horror is international, there is a strong English tradition of it too – and I was happy to lean into that tradition.
Where did you film it? And how important were the specific locations to you?
Bath is quite a folk horror city: in its centre you have Bath Abbey – a beautiful celebration of Christianity – and right next door is the Roman Baths, which houses ancient sculptures of Roman-era Gods. It also has a lot of quaint rural satellite villages, and the majority of the films were shot in these little shires.
Rewilding is a three-story anthology featuring three natural spaces – an ancient tree, a pumpkin field and a sea cave. Finding the latter was challenging but I eventually discovered one in the Gower, south Wales. I climbed down a steep cliff to access the beach – and it was only once I was there that I looked up and saw steps leading down the hillside! The sea cave was beautiful. I lay down inside it and felt right at home.
Finding the haunted tree was another challenge. Ancient forests look very different to younger ones, and I ended up in Leigh Woods in Bristol – which actually has several candidates for menacing looking trees. The only mistake I made was casting the tree in winter when it was barren and gnarly: when we came back to shoot in the summer it had leaves on again and looked much friendlier! Oh dear.
You can find Rewilding on streaming platforms, including Amazon.
Notes:
[i] See George Monbiot, “My Manifesto for Rewilding the World,” The Guardian, 27 May, 2013, and his book, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
