Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror

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Ollie W @RT90619198 Aug 20, 2026 It’s a very long film. There’s some great content here: beautiful clips from some niche old movies, interviews with authoritative writers and filmmakers. It starts off strong but there is no need for it to be this long. While much of what it covers can legitimately be termed folk horror, there’s also plenty here that cannot. Candyman, set in an urban American location, is not folk horror. Wolf Creek is not a folk horror film. The scope is too broad. I primarily associate folk horror with England, but this doc takes a very international perspective. The section on Australian 'folk horror' gets a bit woke. I would have preferred for this documentary to dive deeper into English films like The Wicker Man. Some of the commentators read too much into, and overly intellectualise, what are often just entertainment movies, and even in some cases rather trashy silly movies. There's not always some salient political or historical angle for every horror film. See more Bigbossbalrog T @Jigokju Jan 20, 2026 Great folkhorror piece! Really liked this! Came with the severin box set! See more Kevin L @Lakeman Dec 16, 2025 Remarkable, encyclopedic history of folk horror films and tangential works of cinema. Goes through the tradition of such art that springs from largely shared mythologies, folktales, and tropes around the world. Beginning largely with British folk works, the doc details films of Europe, esp. that of slavic cultures. But also delved into the extensive movies of southeastern Asia, Latin America, the U.S. and more. 4.4 stars for the wealth of films included and interviews w/ authors and directors whose works cover this subject matter. See more Jaye R @RT37893907 Oct 2, 2024 A fantastic primer on British folk horror and beyond. Extensive, artistic, beautiful to watch and listen to. I now have a Folk Horror movie bucket list ready to take me to Halloweentown. Thank you for giving such time, detail and thought-provoking conversations to a genre that's won my heart and stolen my soul. See more ArtystaPisarz P @ArtystaPisarz Sep 16, 2024 In the age of YouTube video essays that are several hours long and that I like to watch really badly, “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror” don’t impress me nearly as much with their runtime as they would sometime ago. But this does not mean that it is not an impressive piece of work, not in any way. There are, after all, some things that YouTube video essays cannot (yet) do, such as multiple interviews with experts in their fields, and this is where documentaries still shine. “Woodlands” are an exceptionally good watch, a trough examination of a fascinating genre that leaves no stone unturned, with interviews chock-full with interesting information and takes by people who really know what they are talking about. It’s much more than just dry description of the particular movies, as it aims to describe the cultural history of folk horror, its sources and reasons why this genre resonates with the modern public. This is one of those documentaries that will enrich your knowledge on one particular topic, but by doing so will also broaden your horizons and invite you to do further research by yourself. What a wonderful piece of entertainment merged with education, comparable to the best of video essays. See more a a @RT53807821 Dec 18, 2023 This is the best study of archaic images in cinematic art that I have ever seen in my life, executed meticulously. What a pity that this is such a short study, I am sure that it would have been possible to release 3 episodes of 2 hours each. In any case, this is the best I've seen from such an important horror genre. See more Read all reviews

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror

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