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Posted on November 9, 2015

Don’t Go Into the Woods: The Hallow

Dawn Keetley

Corin Hardy’s 2015 Irish folk horror film,The Hallow follows a couple, Adam and Claire Hitchens (Joseph Mawle and Bojana Novakovic), along with their baby, Finn, who go to stay in a house deep in the Irish forest, which has just been sold for development. They discover there is a frightening truth to local folklore about “the hallow”—fairies and other supernatural creatures who want humans to stay out of their woods.

I really wanted to like The Hallow, but while there are certainly some interesting aspects to the film, overall I have to say that it was a pretty big disappointment.

The Hallow is firmly in the folk horror tradition, the crucial components of which I mapped out in an earlier post. It is dominated by the landscape (beautifully shot, despite the film’s other limitations), located in an isolated community, and the narrative is driven by archaic occult beliefs. The film also, though, draws liberally from other kinds of horror. At times, it fairly self-consciously evokes creature features—Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982)—as well as what could be called the “possessed patriarch” films—The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Shining (1982). The creatures were also reminiscent of those in Neil Marshall’s brilliant The Descent (2005)—and the two films share something of a narrative trajectory. While horror films always draw on other horror films, though, The Hallow may do so a bit too wildly and without shaping its borrowings into something distinctively its own.

Posted on November 6, 2015

The Resurgence of Folk Horror

Dawn Keetley

If you haven’t yet heard of folk horror, this post will serve as your introduction to a subgenre that seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance. It’ll also get you ready for the release onto VOD on Friday (November 6) of what promises to be a compelling example of that renaissance—The Hallow, a British-Irish co-production filmed in Ireland, and directed by Corin Hardy. The official trailer includes the tag-line, “Nature has a dark side,” getting at what I think is perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of folk horror: Nature is no longer content to be background. Nature has power, agency, in folk horror. It lives, moves, acts, overpowers, destroys.

By most accounts, the term “folk horror” was coined by Mark Gatiss in a 2010 BBC documentary on the history of horror. Gatiss identified three films as the core of this tradition—Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). Recent discussion of this newly-defined horror subgenre (almost all on websites and blogs) has begun to uncover both its roots and its persistence, looking back to late nineteenth-century writers of “weird” fiction, like M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood, and recognizing the contemporary renaissance of folk horror in Wake Wood (David Keating, 2010) and Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) and A Field in England (2013). I should add to the list, too, the upcoming The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015) and The Forest (Jason Zada, 2016).

Posted on November 4, 2015

Drop What You’re Doing and Watch BBC Three’s In the Flesh

Guest Post

Zombies are so popular now that it almost seems cliché to recommend yet another film or television series revolving around them. Yes, AMC’s The Walking Dead is outstanding, but this often overlooked show – In the Flesh – is even better. Originally, the show was comprised of a three episode long miniseries for BBC Three but, thanks to its enormous popularity, it was granted a second season (or “series” as the British refer to it) consisting of six more episodes and continuing the enthralling story created by Dominic Mitchell.

In the Flesh follows main character Kieren Walker (played by Luke Newberry), a zombie. How many examples can you name in film and television in which a zombie is the main character? Probably very few. This factor is what makes this show so interesting and such a fresh take on what can seem to some of even the most devout horror fans as a tired subgenre. Anyway, the show’s mythology is highly complex and, in a very British televisual style, it focuses on serious societal issues, unafraid to examine politically potent plotlines.

In the Flesh tells us what happens after the zombie apocalypse—after what the characters refer to as “The Rising,” an otherwise ordinary day in the United Kingdom. Those who died already, during a certain time frame, spontaneously come back to life, dig themselves out of their own graves, and find that they crave human flesh. Their bites do not infect you – you cannot become one of them – but they still can kill you. The UK government has developed a cure for this “rotter” problem (their term for the zombies) by injecting them with a serum in the back of the neck every day. After some good ole rehabilitation in a creepy mental institution/rehab-like facility, these “rotters” can be reintegrated into society, becoming normal, compliant citizens. Of course, not everyone is okay with that plan and chaos soon ensues.

Posted on November 2, 2015

The Final Girls (2015) Film Review

Elizabeth Erwin

The Final Girls (2015) directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson is a curious horror film. On the surface it is an homage to all the ridiculous tropes that made 1980s slasher films so irresistible. But lurking beneath this campy homage is a heartfelt sentimentality that works because it is so unexpected. The end result is a horror film that manages to break new ground tonally while still providing the gasp-worthy moments sought after by fans.

Fueled by memorable performances, most notably by the criminally underrated Malin Akerman, The Final Girls features way better acting than we would expect to see in a slasher film. The story revolves around Max, a girl whose recently deceased actress mother is a cult star of a slasher film. When a series of events pull Max and her friends into the fictional world of the cult film, the teens must figure out how to avoid the knife-wielding killer.

Posted on October 30, 2015

10 Horror Legends We Miss

Gwen

As the harvest season ends and winter looms ever near, the Celts believed that this transition between seasons opened a bridge between the living and the dead. It is thought that the winter cold and higher death rates contributed to this blurring of life and death. The Celtic festival Samhain moved people to wear costumes to ward off ghosts that roamed the earth, brought trouble, and even served as harbingers of death.

As Romans later conquered much of the Celtic land, their festival (Feralia) which commemorated the dead, came to blend with the Celtic Samhain. Much later, with the spread of Catholicism, the Church drafted their own day of remembrance to honor martyrs, saints, and the dead on All Souls Day, All Saints Day, and All Hallows Eve.

Despite the watered down, consumer version in America today, Halloween is still fundamentally about blurred boundaries and remembering the dead. No matter how you celebrate—whether you dress up to ward off ghosts or partake in a vegetarian feast by the light of a bonfire—we should honor the origins of our favorite horror holiday.

Join me in commemorating Halloween in true horror film fashion by remembering some of our dearly departed.