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Posted on May 7, 2021

In the Earth: Ben Wheatley’s New Folk Horror

Dawn Keetley

Ben Wheatley’s new film, In the Earth, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January 2021, is a fascinating film—especially for fans of folk horror. Wheatley is well-known to those fans, of course, for his previous work in the sub-genre: Kill List (2010), Sightseers (2012), and A Field in England (2013).

In my view, In the Earth is one of the most important folk horror films of the last decade—up there with Wheatley’s own Kill List, although the two films could not be more different.

claw reaches over a table while man looks on

Posted on April 15, 2021

Blood on Satan’s Claw at 50!

Special Issue #4

Among other things, Piers Haggard’s 1971 The Blood on Satan’s Claw was crucial in shaping the folk horror tradition. Near the end of part two, “Home Counties Horrors,” of his influential 2010 BBC documentary, Mark Gatiss shifts from discussing the dominant Hammer films of the 1960s to articulating a “new” kind of horror film that avoids what he calls “the gothic clichés.” “Amongst these,” he claims, “are a loose collection of films that we might call folk horror.” Haggard himself, whom Gatiss interviews, says, “I suppose I was trying to make a folk horror film.”

And there’s so much more: buried demonic remains, a cult of villagers who rape and murder, witchcraft, strangely animate claws, self-mutilation, black fur spreading over human bodies, and invocations of Behemoth!

In honor of the milestone 50th anniversary of what has become an indisputable cult classic, we are thrilled to present ten original essays that explain why The Blood on Satan’s Claw continues to engage fans of all kinds. We hope you enjoy!

DOWNLOAD THE FULL ISSUE OR READ ONLINE

Posted on February 14, 2021

Red Dot – Survival Folk Horror

Dawn Keetley

Red Dot is a Swedish film released on Netflix US on February 11, 2021. Directed by Alain Darborg and written by Darborg and Per Dickson, Red Dot is a hybrid of survival horror, backwoods horror, and folk horror – more specifically, it’s part of a subgenre I call survival folk horror. Other examples include Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972), Eden Lake (James Watkins, 2008), and Calibre (Matt Palmer, 2018).

The film follows Stockholm couple Nadja (Nanna Blondell) and David (Anastasios Soulis), along with their dog Boris, as they decide to head north to isolated Bear Valley to ski, camp, and see the Northern Lights. On the way there, as they stop to get gas, they encounter two hunters who suggestively mock David as a “pretty boy” and eye Nadja, who is Black with a kind of contemptuous sexual aggression. Both David and Nadja are unnerved by this encounter, especially after David sees a gun and a severed reindeer head in the back of their truck. Pulling away from the gas pump, he bumps their truck, leaving a small dent. They drive away nonetheless.

Posted on December 1, 2020

The Blood on Satan’s Claw – CFP for Special Issue #4

Call for Papers

**DEADLINE EXTENDED** TO FEBRUARY 15, 2021

THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW (1971)

Horror Homeroom’s special issue #4 – Spring 2021

Piers Haggard’s groundbreaking The Blood on Satan’s Claw was released on April 14, 1971. To celebrate its 50^th anniversary, we will be running our fourth special issue on Blood on Satan’s Claw and its profound and persistent influence.

Posted on October 1, 2020

Best Folk Horror – Off the Beaten Track

Dawn Keetley

As folk horror has steadily become more popular over the course of the last ten years, a canon has emerged –the “must watch” folk horror films. These canonical films are all eminently worth watching—and they begin with what Adam Scovell called the “unholy trinity”: Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971), and The Wicker Man (Robert Hardy, 1973). (Scovell’s 2017 critical study, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange is required reading if you’re interested in folk horror, by the way.) In the second contemporary resurgence of folk horror, there is already what seems like it might be a new US “unholy trinity.” Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) and Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) are already must-see films; Midsommar, in particular, is profoundly influenced by the earlier films, especially The Wicker Man.

As fantastic as these six films are, there is so much more to folk horror. So, throughout the month of October, I’ll be posting works of folk horror—film, TV, fiction—that are off the beaten track. Some of them are hybrids, since folk horror is a capacious category and is often intertwined with other genres (science fiction and the murder mystery, for instance). Some of them are new. Some of them are lesser-known works from the 1960s and 70s. All of them are good!