Published by Manchester
University Press
October 2023
264 pages
Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-5261-6492-6
RRP: £90
Some credit director Piers Haggard with coining the term
‘Folk Horror’ during an interview to set his film The Blood on Satan’s Claw
(1971) apart from the more traditional horror offerings by the likes of Hammer
Films and Amicus. As the term has taken hold, such films have become more
closely aligned with a European arthouse style of filmmaking. The genre has
since been retrospectively assigned to many films including the aforementioned
film, alongside the other two points of the ‘Unholy Trinity’ of British Folk Horror;
Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973). This is a
‘wyrd’ genre, where the films are often unsettling rather than outright
horrifying, although in the case of modern folk horrors such as Kill List (2011),
both things can be said to be true.
When director Ben Wheatley went into the woods to shoot In
the Earth (2021), not only was he returning to the tone and style of his
earlier films Kill List and A Field in England (2013), but he was
also with the title addressing the very essence of Folk Horror: as this new
book discusses in detail, Folk Horror is something with its roots in ancient
(pagan) times, something in the earth, just below the surface - perhaps in an
English field - that once disturbed seeps out, terrifying some, whilst bringing
others together with its community rituals and human sacrifice.
In this new collection of academic essays, the old and
new British examples of the genre are explored in detail from a range of
fascinating perspectives; studies of history, folklore and Britain’s
non-Christian past, the close-knit communities often at the heart of Folk
Horror films and their clashes with modernity, Celtic Folk Horror, the way in
which female filmmakers have subverted tropes and shifted generic conventions,
the recurring use of drums in pagan ceremonies and rituals, the evils of the British
landscape, social and political influences on the films across the decades, and
the relevance and influence of certain British writers such as Arthur Machen on
the genre. As well as the three films of the ‘Unholy Trinity’, each of which
gets a fair amount of analysis here, other films under discussion include Ken
Russell’s wildly entertaining The Lair of the White Worm (1988), based
on the Bram Stoker novel which itself is based on the north-eastern legend of
the Lampton Worm, The Company of Wolves (1984), Doomwatch (1972),
Cry of the Banshee (1970), Psychomania (1973), and many more
including several modern films which this writer was previously unfamiliar but
has to now seek out.
As with all academic collections, the caveat must be
added that the hardback price is because this edition is aimed at libraries,
and a more affordable paperback edition will be available in due course. This
is a worthwhile collection for anyone interested in this ‘wyrd’ sub-genre of
the British horror film, particularly now that Spring is here and soon ‘Summer
is icumen in’.
Folk Horror on Film: Return of the British
Repressed is available from Manchester University Press - https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526164926/