>Miracle Media has shared a poster and trailer for The Witch Game, an Argentinian folklore horror from director Fabián Forte (La Corporaciòn) which is coming to the UK this October. Check out the trailer...

>Mara (Lourdes Mansilla), a moody teenager obsessed with video games and the occult, would rather play than hang out with her family. So, when she unwraps a mysterious virtual reality game on her birthday, promising to teach her real witchcraft, she dives in without hesitation. But this is no ordinary game and what starts as a thrilling adventure quickly turns into a nightmare… Caught in a sinister web of magic, can Mara cast the spell that will set her sister free from The Witch Game?

>I do not wish to dwell overly long on the incredible stop motion sheep in the trailer for folk horror game Daemonologie, because it’s got so much else going for it - from the gorgeously haunting vocal and string melodies to the extremely dark character interactions that offer your witch finder the choice between 'talk' and 'torture'. And yet, living in Wales for the last decade must have rubbed off. The sweet sheep, they sing to me. The relative rarity of stop motion and other practical effects in horror media is surely one of the greater tragedies of our age, although not too surprising given the incredible amount of work it takes. Flock toward the trailer below, and I’ll see you on the other side of the pasture, hopefully as deeply altered by the experience as I was.

>"Daemonologie is a short folk horror story influenced by the Scottish witch trials of the late 1600s," bleats the Steam page. It didn’t actually bleat, to be fair, but bleating is all I can hear now. It’s a short one, apparently clocking in between 30 to 60 minutes for a single playthrough, but with secrets and other mysteries you’ll have to dig for. It’s from Katanalevy, who also made well-loved violin-em-up Symphony of Seven Souls. This one also started as an Itch project, though it looks to have come a long way in the intervening four years...

>Available October 4th on VOD, Digital and on Film Movement Plus, we have an exclusive preview of The Wait, a new folk horror film from F. Javier Guttierez:

>"Deep in the Andalusian countryside, Eladio (Victor Clavijo) has been hired to watch over the hunting grounds of Don Francisco’s estate, somewhere in rural Spain. The estate is divided into ten hunting stands, spaced far enough apart to avoid incidents. After three years of service, Don Carlos — Don Francisco’s second in command — offers him a bribe to add an additional three stands to the property. Eladio initially hesitates, but his wife eventually convinces him to take the money. Eladio’s greed has unfortunate consequences that drag his entire family to perdition, and plunges him into the depths of guilt, hatred, and revenge."

>The thing with Midsommar is that the ending is no mystery. For eagle-eyed viewers, the fate of Florence Pugh’s character, Dani, is revealed from the very beginning. Hiding in plain sight, the ending of Ari Aster’s 2019 folk horror is on the screen repeatedly as Easter eggs throughout make it clear how the tale will end...

>Enys Men is one of those movies that shows a stark contrast between critic and audience scores. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics gave the 2023 film an 86% fresh score, while audiences had a whopping 22% rotten score. This contrast makes sense, as anyone who went into Enys Men assuming it would be a modern, entertaining horror film was about to have their expectations thrown out the window. Enys Men, which is the Cornish translation for "Stone Island," is not fast-paced, nor explicitly horror, and not even a full comprehensive narrative. It’s more so an experience — a portal into a Cornish Island in 1973, witnessing the repeated mundane tasks of a scientist making daily nature observations on an island that becomes stranger each day. Director Mark Jenkin did this intentionally and wanted audiences to view the film and make their own interpretations of the themes, such as manipulating the concept of time and using repetition and nature as pieces to his intricate, unsolvable puzzle.

>What makes Enys Men memorable and respected by critics is how well it transports audiences back to the 1970s. Jenkin not only directed the film, but also wrote, edited, and did the cinematography and music. His complete creative control resulted in a strong, unsettling mood and sense of isolation throughout its entirety. The cast is limited, with Mary Woodvine as the lead, only identified in the credits as “The Volunteer.” The only other notable characters are John Woodvine (“The Preacher”), Edward Rowe (“The Boatman”), and Flo Crowe ("The Girl"). The cast is small, the cottage is tiny; hell, even the island itself is minuscule, helping reinforce the theme of isolation, which also limits what the audience has to pay attention to. The characters, everyday items used, clothing, setting, nature, edits, zooms, atmosphere, and sound all contribute to its vintage feel. Enys Men is not as much entertainment as it is a portal to another place at another time that is interchangeably familiar and foreign...

>XYZ Films has shared a poster and trailer for Falling Stars, the upcoming folk horror from directors Gabriel Bienczycki and Richard Karpala.

>The film follows three brothers as they set off into the desert to take a look at the body of a witch, but after accidentally desecrating the corpse, a terrible curse befalls their family.

>The cast includes Rene Leech, Shaun Duke Jr., Andrew Gabriel, Diane Worman, and Greg Poppa. Watch the trailer...

>Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Yoon Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) are a shaman duo that offers their services to those that are plagued by the vengeful spirits of deceased family members… like the one plaguing the wealthy Park family, and let me tell ya, this one’s a fuckin’ doozy of a creepy case.

>So complex is the job, that our heroes call in the help of geomancer Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and his coroner partner Go Yeong-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) to assist in the exhumation of the relative’s coffin via a traditional ceremony after which the coffin and remains will be cremated.

>No matter how seasoned our shamans are, things go tits up with the quickness once a rain delay keeps that corpse from getting crispy (can’t burn ’em on a soggy day… bad luck) and of course some ass just has to go and open the coffin setting the evill spirit free to go on a supernatural bender that spells bad times for the Park’s.

>But as horrible as events become, they don’t hold a candle to the hell that’s unleashed from a second, rather large coffin that is found at the exhumation site. Do shamans have health insurance, because these folks are going to need it!

>... Bottom line: Exhuma is a fantastic slice of Korean folk horror mixed with the dynamics of the modern world and shouldn’t be missed by lovers of the arcane!

>The legend of The Brahan Seer, the 17th-century Scottish farmhand who is said to have had powers to predict the future, is set to be brought to life on screen as a Gaelic language horror. Gaelic language folk horror Seaforth will be filmed on Lewis and Harris.

>Stories of the so-called “Hebridean Nostradamus”, who was born on the Isle of Lewis, have inspired the project, which will be shot on Lewis and Harris.

>The folk horror’s writer and director John Murdo (JM) MacAulay, who is also from Lewis, will be drawing on stories about Coinneach Odhar, whose predictions were written about extensively in Alexander Mackenzie's 1877 book The Prophecies of The Brahan Seer...

>... The synopsis states: "The film tells the story of the young Coinneach Odhar, as he was known then, who one day stumbles upon a seeing stone, which gives him the ability to see into the future. Now cursed with second sight, he is left to suffer the knowledge of everydetail of his life and death.

>"Set in the Outer Hebrides, the story follows Lady Seaforth, the laird’s wife, who summons the Seer, driven by fears of her husband’s infidelity. This culminates in a fraught interrogation and her quest for the truth leads to broken promises, a struggle for power and a burning body in a whisky barrel."

> Evil comes in many forms. In horror films, it’s often in the form of an inhuman creature or supernatural entity. With folk horror films, however, evil is often personified in people and their actions, seeing the sub-genre interrogate the dark nature of mankind. In The Severed Sun, writer/director Dean Puckett‘s feature debut, a creature may go on a killing spree, but it’s far from the film’s true evil. > > In an isolated British community led by a strict pastor (Toby Stephens, Die Another Day), religion rules the land. When his daughter Magpie (Emma Appleton) gruesomely murders her abusive husband, she inadvertently (or deliberately?) conjures a woodland creature that begins targeting the evil men in the village. As the bodies start to fall, suspicions start to rise, with particular attention being paid to Magpie. The rebellious woman, along with her sons Daniel (Lewis Gribben, Get Duked!) and Sam (Zachary Tanner), must battle the village’s conservative ideals and elude accusations of witchcraft before the natives resort to violence. > > ... > > The Severed Sun is a solid entry in folk horror canon, with a clear message and some impressive effects work and a strong central performance. Pacing proves to be an issue, with Puckett struggling to fill a truncated runtime, but the sun certainly hasn’t set on this burgeoning filmmaker’s career.

>Falling Stars: A Deconstruction of Folk Horror Witch Tales

>Falling Stars is about folk horror and a deconstruction of the classic witch mythos. In an alternate reality where witches are very real, the night of the first harvest is when harmless traditional rituals are performed to placate witches in the sky. For the three brothers in the American Southwest, this year's event will be different. When they discover their friend has killed and buried a witch, they venture out into the desert to witness it for themselves. Whilst encountering the scene, they accidentally desecrate the body, setting in motion a sequence of perilous events. The only way they can put a stop to the curse set upon their family is to burn the corpse before sunrise. Accidentally desecrating a witch's body tends to happen in supernatural thrillers since nothing should ever go right in a horror movie. The only way to stop the curse on their family is a race against time, where the idiot brothers have to burn the body before sunrise. It's always a hassle when you have to rush to burn a body before sundown in the California desert. Care to bet whether they do it in time? That's the thrust of the movie...

>Newly restored in 4k and available for the first time in North America, Austrian auteur Jessica Hausner radically upends genre tropes and preempts the resurgence of folk horror with her second and most formally audacious feature, HOTEL. The deceptively simple premise of a young woman who takes on a job as a night porter at a remote Austrian hotel and encounters unexplained phenomena amounts to a grand treatise on the inhibiting potential of imagination, the fine line between banality and terror and the looming specter of fate.

>Allusions to local myth, mysterious disappearances and haunted forests eschew generic conclusions and serve to illustrate and complicate the inner life of a young woman reckoning with the essential ambiguities of defining one’s life. “An intelligent fable about fear and desire,” (Time Out) Hausner’s sophomore feature is a haunting metaphysical horror film unlike any other...

>Barfoot draws from folk horror, both in setting and storytelling, for his unique creature feature. That means that the horror builds slowly, relying on atmosphere and the isolated, stunning wooded setting to create unease as Lewis and Laura struggle with their loss. Neither handle it well; the quiet Lewis has retreated into himself as Laura relies heavily on their wine cellar to cope with the empty nights. It’s an emotionally fraught environment perfect for horror to take root, further sowing division between son and stepmom.

>That horror comes slowly, with Barfoot strategically escalating the creature’s invasion. When the creature does appear, always obscured enough to retain mystery, it’s effectively chilling. The filmmaker has a strong sense of editing that only enhances the visceral terror of the entity, though he is prone to pulling punches. The action cuts away on more than one occasion just as Barfoot dangles the possibility of full-throttle horror, opting instead to preserve the enigmatic nature of this particular creature...

>... Daddy’s Head is handsomely crafted, with a creature design that’s pure nightmare fuel. Barfoot knows exactly how and when to employ it for maximum discomfort, though he is prone to cutting the horror scenes too early. The final coda, while sweet, doesn’t quite hit its intended note, either. Barfoot isn’t interested in spelling out everything, working heavily in its favor. While that ultimately makes for a sparser story, it’s one that rewards more depending on how much work you’re willing to put in as a viewer to decipher its details and clues. Whether you’re on this movie’s wavelength or not, one thing is certain: Daddy’s Head is creepy as hell.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17829450

> > Nick Frost is no stranger to horror comedies, having starred in such modern classics as Shaun of the Dead and Attack the Block. This year, the actor has already starred in Krazy House (review), and now he is reuniting with that film’s director Steffen Haars in Get Away, a frequently amusing folk horror comedy that relishes in bloodshed almost as much as it does cringe comedy. > > > > The Smith Family, comprised of patriarch Richard (Nick Frost), matriarch Susan (Aisling Bea), sister Jessie (Maisie Ayres) and brother Sam (Heartstopper‘s Sebastian Croft), is spending their holiday on Svälta, a fictional Swedish island with a dark past tied to Susan’s ancestor. Despite warnings not to from quite literally everyone they cross paths with along the way, the Smiths arrive on the island and are greeted with immediate hostility from the mainlanders, especially from the skeptical town elder (Anitta Suikkari), who is busy directing a play for their annual Karantan festival. Upon arriving at their AirBnb, the Smith family starts to notice strange occurrences happening on the island, as well as a few too many coffins being loaded onto boats at the harbor, leading to a comically violent fight for survival as Karantan draws near. > > IMDb

> Withered Hill by David Barnett (Canelo, £9.99) > > A young woman stumbles naked out of the woods, into the village of Withered Hill. She knows her name is Sophie, but she doesn’t remember anything about her previous life. The locals are friendly but strange. Attempts to escape meet with failure, but her new friends promise that she will be able to leave when the time is right. The dual timeline moves between Sophie’s life in London in the month before her arrival, and what happens in Withered Hill, as she uneasily adjusts to its odd customs and seasonal celebrations. At times this folk horror, while engaging, may seem a bit predictable, but the narrative rug is pulled out from under the reader with a terrific unexpected twist.

>... The Severed Sun is a deeply immersive and atmospheric folk horror in the truest, traditional sense – unlike some recent additions to this subgenre. It isn’t a cash-in based on the success of something like Midsommar as it’s a work truly stepped in distinctly British (or European), horror, nor is it a movie that simply presents the conventions of the genre in a neat fashion without any inclination to examine them or approach them in any meaningful, creative way (yes, I’m looking at you Lord of Misrule). A deeply ambiguous movie, The Severed Sun intentionally presents its audience with a puzzle to savour and return to – one which affords them the opportunity to create their own interpretations and ideas about what they might have seen. It’s a remarkable achievement considering its time restraints and budget, and the film’s experimental and unnervingly atmospheric electronic soundtrack, written and performed by Brain Rays adds to the experience. It’s an auteur’s work – a beautifully considered movie in which all its key components work in harmony and has Puckett’s fingerprints all over it, and once again I’m left hoping to see more in the future.

>The British-American series The Third Day, created by Felix Barrett and Dennis Kelly (who made the masterpiece Utopia), is a 2020 psychological thriller-folk horror series that should certainly have gotten more recognition, especially for fans of disturbing cults in horror, as it is one that will have your jaw on the floor. The story follows a man and then a woman on their separate journeys, but arrive at the same island at different times; what happens there is far more shocking than they had anticipated. For those who have forgotten about The Third Day, here's a recap, and for those who don't know, let's find out what it's about and why it should be one to remember...

>A camp excursion takes a deadly turn in Lore, a gruesome and acclaimed anthology horror film from directors James Bushe, Patrick Ryder, and Greig Johnson.

>Premiering at last year's FrightFest, Lore is now available to stream exclusively on the Icon Film Channel and will be shown in select theaters in the United Kingdom beginning on Friday, September 27. For those unable to access the movie via those two methods, it will be available on home entertainment in October in the UK.

>Starring Richard Brake (Hannibal Rising), Andrew Lee Potts (The Witcher), Bill Fellows (Ted Lasso), and Rufus Hound (Hounded), Lore centers on a group of friends on a fun and fright-filled camping excursion led by their mysterious guide, Darwin (Brake). Around the campfire, Darwin encourages everyone to exchange scary stories, but they're unaware that telling tales about demons and spirits could have dangerous repercussions for them all.

>Based on the trailer and early photos, it looks like Lore will feature popular folk horror tropes, menacing stalkers, ghostly hauntings, and more. Some reviewers have compared it to classic Hammer horror films mixed in with a dash of Black Mirror.

>Check out the full-length trailer...

>Back in 2020, Collider did a deep dive into the artistic work of Didier Konings, an accomplished concept artist, digital painter, and visual effects artist whose work featured in the likes of Wonder Woman, Rampage, Stranger Things, and Mouse Guard, to name just a few. Since then, Konings has been a busy man, and there have been exciting developments in his career. Last year, Konings teamed up with Make Way Film for his first feature-length project, Heresy, which Collider is delighted to reveal, is set to have its U.S. premiere this week at Fantastic Fest. Since relocating from his native Netherlands, Konings has spent the last ten years working as a concept and VFX artist and, as we've previously noted, his contributions to major studio projects shouldn't be ignored.

>His extensive experience in VFX and design played a critical role in Heresy, where he personally handled much of the visual effects work. After directing two award-winning short films over the last four years, Heresy (also known as Witte Wieven) serves as a return to his native Dutch roots, bringing audiences a gripping folk tale of revenge and redemption, mixed with just the right amount of horror thrills. The film received critical and audience acclaim at its world premiere in Rotterdam during IFFR this past January.

>The official description of the project gives you an indication of what to expect from the Folk Horror:

> "Didier Konings’ simmering medieval horror Witte Wieven explores the confluence of religion and patriarchy in an excessively puritanical Dutch village. Blamed by her community for being childless, Frieda immerses herself in prayer and ritual. When she returns unscathed from the forbidden forest surrounding the village, having evaded a lecherous butcher, she is condemned as an agent of the devil. Frieda, however, finds new faith in the dark powers that inhabit the woods. Shot in a reduced color palette at the edge of visibility, Konings’ gripping film constructs a convincing pre-modern society whose practices it elucidates with patience and attention. Although set in the Middle Ages, Witte Wieven displays an unmistakably contemporary spirit, crafting a feminist parable about women discovering new ways of understanding their lives and the world"...

>Haunted by a personal tragedy, home care worker, Shoo (Clare Monnelly) is sent to a remote village to care for an agoraphobic woman (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who fears the neighbours as much as she fears the Na Sídhe – sinister entities who she believes abducted her decades before. As the two develop a strangely deep connection, Shoo is consumed by the old woman’s paranoia, rituals, and superstitions, eventually leading her to confront the horrors from her own past...

> The Outcasts, which tells the story of a ‘mad’ young woman in pre-famine Ireland who meets a feared shaman and has her powerful true nature revealed to her, is the great lost classic of Irish cinema. Combining gritty realism in its depiction of rural Irish poverty, sexual frankness and mythic grandeur, it had a tremendously powerful effect on Irish cinephiles of a certain age, myself included, but has been impossible to see in any decent form in the four decades since its release. > >A beautiful new restoration by the Irish Film Archive is finally putting this right, and a generation of folk-horror fans are about to get the opportunity to see this poetic, unforgettable work for the first time. > >I spoke to its writer-director, Robert Wynne-Simmons, who also scripted the classic British folk-horror The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), about the production of the film and his feelings about seeing it rediscovered by a new generation.

> The 2020s have already been great for folk horror, but the current folk horror revival really got its start in the previous decade. The niche subgenre, which had been around since the 1960s and 1970s, didn't get a name until actor Mark Gatiss of Sherlock fame used the term "folk horror" in 2010 to describe a trio of influential films in his BBC documentary series, A History of Horror. Suddenly, a generation of writers and filmmakers who had grown up on the old British films and television programs were inspired to revisit the rural terrors of their youth. > > Folk horror, which was initially recognized as a British phenomenon, became closely associated with imagery from the British Isles, such as stone circles, druids, and the green man. However, the modern folk horror revival has been more inclusive, as filmmakers from around the world draw inspiration from their countries' history and folklore. From Indonesia to Austria, these are the best folk horror movies of the 2010s.

1. Midsommar (2019)
2. Kill List (2011)
3. The Witch (2015)
4. The Borderlands (2013)
5. The Wailing (2016)
6. The Ritual (2017)
7. Impetigore (2019)
8. La Llorona (2019)
9. Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse (2017)
10. A Dark Song (2016)

Warning: the image used dod The Ritual is a massive spoiler - go watch it first, it's worth going in blind.

See also:

• 10 best Folk Horror movies of the 2020s (so far)

"Watch enough genre movies and you will realise that grief is inevitably a doorway to all kinds of darkness. Daniel Kokotajlo’s creepily atmospheric adaptation of Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel is the latest in a long list of films (including The Babadook and Don’t Look Now) that harness bereavement in the service of horror.

Juliette (Morfydd Clark) and her archaeologist husband, Richard (Matt Smith), have returned to his family home in 1970s Yorkshire. But then a tragedy leaves the couple vulnerable to an ancient evil that lurks in the land. A slow-burning folk-horror, the film is a marked change of direction for Kokotajlo, whose debut, Apostasy, dealt with a crisis of faith in a Jehovah’s Witness community.

Starve Acre is steeped in arcane rituals and underpinned by the layers of pagan mythology that lurk beneath our thin veneer of civilisation. The brooding atmosphere is as oppressive as the haunted-looking wallpaper in the couple’s farmhouse. Some pleasingly icky special effects add to the general sense of mouldering menace. Where the picture stumbles, however, is in its almost total lack of effective scares."

Gwledd/The Feast (2021) got the number one slot in the best folk horror movies of the 2020s listicle but there isn't a post on it, so here is one from 2022.

> Where did the inspiration for this project come from? > > I’ve worked with screenwriter Roger Williams quite a bit on a number of television projects, and we’re both passionate about horror. We were also passionate about creating a piece of horror cinema in the Welsh language, with the ambition of having it travel the world. We decided to delve into the long history of Welsh literature, which is inherently horrific in many ways, and use that as a springboard to tell a story about contemporary Wales, weaving in the global theme of climate crisis. > > ... > > Now that the film is about to be unleashed on the world, what are your hopes for it and the Welsh industry at large? > >I have big hopes for our little film. I would love it if it were to kickstart some kind of industry in the Welsh language. There’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t have a thriving film industry. But it seems to me that we need to be pragmatic in establishing the kind of brand that we sell to the world, and it’s about identifying what we do really well. Our culture, our literary heritage is full of these brilliant, fantastical stories. I think that’s a really good base for us to start from. There is no reason why Wales can’t be as renowned for horror as somewhere like South Korea.

For it's reception see:

• Gwledd (The Feast) on track to become most successful Welsh language film of all time
• The Feast’ review: A keen-edged, slow-burn Welsh-language horror that takes no prisoners
• The Feast is a chilling Welsh-language eco-horror
• The Feast—folklore meets gore in this environmental horror film

Trailer

IMDb

> Folk horror has only recently been recognized as a distinct subgenre, even though some of its most famous works--including Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan's Claw, and The Wicker Man--came out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many folk horror movies focus on isolated communities that get swept up in dangerous superstitions, while others highlight the darkness in aspects of folk culture, such as music, stories, and rituals. Over the decades, what was once considered a British phenomenon has flourished into a worldwide fascination. > >The 2020s, in particular, have seen an explosion of folk horror movies. It's hard to say exactly what inspired the trend, but the popularity of Ari Aster's Midsommar (2019) and rising interest in folklore seem to be contributing factors. The folk horror movies of the last few years have proven that the genre is more than just pagans and stone circles; from the glacial valleys of Iceland to the ancestral burial grounds of South Korea, the settings of modern folk horror are more diverse than ever.

They are:

1. The Feast (2021)
2. You Won’t Be Alone (2022)
3. Exhuma (2024)
4. Starve Acre (2023)
5. Enys Men (2022)
6. Lamb (2021)
7. Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)
8. The Devil’s Bath (2024)
9. Hellbender (2021)
10. All You Need Is Death (2023)

> Austria in the 18th century. Forests surround villages. Killing a baby gets a woman sentenced to death. Agnes readies for married life with her beloved. But her mind and heart grow heavy. A gloomy path alone, evil thoughts arising.

IMDb

> You've heard of Candyman. You've heard of Batman. You've heard of Bicentennial Man (actually, maybe not that one!). But did you ever hear of Bagman? A child-snatching nightmare figure from Latin American, Eastern European, Asian, and African folklore, the Bagman — or Sack Man, as he's sometimes known — is a Pennywise-like force of evil who takes innocent kids and stuffs them, well, in his bag. And he's the central figure looming over The Girl With All The Gifts director Colm McCarthy and writer John Hulme's aptly titled folk chiller Bagman, which is set to see Sam Claflin, Antonia Thomas (The Good Doctor), and Aftersun breakout star Frankie Corio among others come face to face with the eldritch terror. Watch the creepy first trailer below:

Trailer on YouTube

All profits from the digital sales will go to the Woodland Trust.

The countryside: a place of tranquillity, less compromised by modern life, harmonious communities, innocence and safety. This much is the rural idyll. Yet the rural is also the unknown rustling in the hedgerow as the country lane is travelled at night. It can be the half-seen shapes and shadows in the woodland and copse; the desolate hillside, the treacherous rocky crag; the lone leafless tree atop the knoll. The countryside is the space where supposed closely-knit social ties become like suffocating and impenetrable knotweed to the outsider, the incomer, the blow-in. It is the place of curious rituals, wyrd practices and often unfamiliar and still-surviving lore: a space haunted by the ghosts of occluded pasts. Beyond the supposed rural idyll malevolent forces often work, uncanny sensations prowl and the eerie is always lurking and ready to be encountered.

Rural Eerie seeks to explore this countryside through music, sound, spoken word, poetry and visuals. It hopes to bring to the surface different ruralities – real, half-remembered, imagined, absent and present – and make us think differently about the countryside.

A number of poets and writers were commissioned to speak to this idea. Each poet and writer gave Flange Circus a number of keywords from their writing and the band then crafted individualised soundscapes befitting their work.

Presented by Flange Circus, Emily Oldfield (Haunt Manchester) and MASSmcr, Rural Eerie was debuted and performed in its entirety on the 19th October 2019 at The Peer Hat in Manchester, as part of the Gothic Manchester Festival 2019 (bit.ly/2XF8kKB). An abridged version was performed at the Manchester Folk Horror Festival III 1st Feb 2020, also at The Peer Hat in Manchester (youtu.be/egd7JTdDyxY).

Flange Circus are:

Pete Collins: Keyboards, Programming, Noises, Visuals.

Bon Holloway: Keyboards, Programming, Field Recordings, Noises.

John Taylor: Keyboards, Accordion, Noises.

The poets and writers appearing on Rural Eerie are:

Emily Oldfield:

Emily is a writer originally from Rossendale, currently based in Manchester. She is interested in the intersections between writing, place, community and under-covered histories. Her first poetry pamphlet ‘Grit’ was published with Poetry Salzburg in March 2020. During 2020 she has been working on a project about Winter Hill as part of Penned In The Margins’ Edgelandia series and is the Editor of Haunt Manchester (Manchester Metropolitan University). She has also written for a number of music websites including Louder Than War and At The Barrier.

Mark Pajak:

Mark has written for The BBC, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books, among others. His first pamphlet, ‘Spitting Distance’, was selected by Carol Ann Duffy as a Laureate’s Choice and is published with smith|doorstop (poetrybusiness.co.uk/bookshop/). You can find him at: markpajakpoet.com

Helen Darby:

Helen is a poet and performer who has lived in the North West of England for nearly 50 years. Her piece for Rural Eerie is inspired by harvest rituals, folk music and the rise of populism in contemporary times. You can find her at: Helendarbypoetry.com

Sarah Hymas:

Sarah lives by Morecambe Bay, England. Her writing appears in print, multimedia exhibits, as lyrics, installations and on stage. She also makes artist books and immersive walks. You can find her at: www.sarahhymas.net

Andrew Michael Hurley:

Andrew Michael Hurley is a short story writer and the author of three novels, The Loney (Winner of the 2015 Costa Book Awards First Novel Award), Devil's Day and Starve Acre. He teaches Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University's Writing School.

Track 12, ‘The Desolation’, is read and performed by Louise Holloway. This comprises a number of stanzas of the epic poem ‘The Desolation of Eyam’ by Mary Howitt (1827). The last stanza is from Canto II of ‘Medicus-Magus’ by Richard Furness (1836).

All music written by Flange Circus.

Field recordings from various rural locations in: Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and North Yorkshire.

Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Bon Holloway at High Peak Recordings, New Mills, Derbyshire. www.highpeakrecordings.com

Mark Pajak, Sarah Hymas and Andrew Michael Hurley were recorded at Manchester Metropolitan University with the assistance of Lucy Simpson.

Flange Circus would like to extend special thanks to Lucy Simpson and Emily Oldfield. Without their dedication and enthusiasm, Rural Eerie would never have happened.

We would also like to thank: all the poets and writers, MASSmcr, Haunt Manchester, RAH! Manchester Met (@mmu_RAH), The Three B's, Mrs. H., KMH & DCH & MNH, Nick Kenyon at The Peer Hat, Ian Rothwell and Salford City Radio, Richard Skelton, Kevin Fisher, Matt Gannicliffe and you. Especially you.

> A black cloud makes its way across Glastonbury Festival’s Park stage - though today it’s a metaphorical one, for the bleakness that Dublin folk group Lankum bring feels entirely out of place in the current setting of gleaming sun that shines its way in a cheery halo around the area. In similar spirit, the band’s performance is one of polarity; great despair and intense joy, ebullient jigs and dismal doom. And in a word, the experience is spectacular. > > After welcoming their crowd of “sexy weirdos” - the band are continually warm and witty - Lankum creep into their ten-minute cover of traditional folk song The Wild Rover from 2019’s The Livelong Day. The crowd are eerily silent (which is impressive, for this commonly chatty Glastonbury lot) as strings build into a see-sawing, foreboding melody to frontwoman Radie Peat’s bewitching voice, who is soon joined by the rest of her band - Ian Lynch, Daragh Lynch and Cormac MacDiarmada - in haunting harmony. Then, the strings bend, aching and swelling all the more into chasm-deep wells of dread. Lankum’s sense of doom is both disturbing yet euphoric, a tragic, glorious rebirth of the senses that finds its way into each of their following songs. > > ... > > Images of grisly landscapes echo in the mind later for the closing Go Dig My Grave from 2023’s Mercury Award-nominated False Lankum, its overwhelming cacophony bleeding out into the best folk horror soundtrack never written. As they finish, the tense shoulders and held-breaths of the crowd give out into roaring, satiated applause, and the momentarily, oh-so-deliciously dark corner of Glastonbury returns to its former, now somewhat more ordinary light.

BBC Music have their Glastonbury performance of Bear Creek.

> There is, however, a rich seam of all things folk horror in fiction old and new and I had great (evil) fun reading the below in the course of my research:

• Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
• The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
• The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology, selected and illustrated by Richard Wells

> Looking for a group of long-missing children on a patch of moorland, podcaster Claire (Sophia La Porta) thinks she has defined her search area. But when she lays down her map in front of the police chief who once led the case, he reaches for a box and arrays five more Ordnance Surveys around it. His rejoinder – “That’s the moor” – is the equivalent of “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” in this redoubtable folk horror debut evidently inspired by the Brady-Hindley murders. You could also call it topographical horror, with director Chris Cronin using a simple set of elements – swirling mists, neolithic stones, baleful staring rams, chairs that look like baleful staring rams – to construct a formidable ambience on his fictional Holme moor.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16219937

> https://bookriot.com/2023-stoker-award-winners-for-best-horror-and-dark-fantasy/ > > The Bram Stoker Award is a prestigious literary award presented annually by the Horror Writers Association (HWA) to recognize "superior achievement" in dark fantasy and horror writing. > > Here are the 2023 Stoker Award Winners > > - Superior Achievement in a Novel: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due > - Superior Achievement in a First Novel: The Daughters of Block Island by Christa Carmen > - Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel: The Nighthouse Keeper by Lora Senf > - Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel: She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran > - Superior Achievement in Long Fiction: Linghun by Ai Jiang > - Superior Achievement in Short Fiction: “Quondam” by Cindy O’Quinn > - Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection: Blood from the Air by Gemma Files > - Superior Achievement in an Anthology: Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele & John Joseph Adams > - Superior Achievement in Long Nonfiction: 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered by Sadie Hartmann > - Superior Achievement in Short Nonfiction: “Becoming Ungovernable: Latah, Amok, and Disorder in Indonesia” by Nadia Bulkin (Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror) > - Superior Achievement in Poetry: On the Subject of Blackberries by Stephanie M. Wytovich > - Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel: Carmilla: The First Vampire by Amy Chu, art by Soo Lee > - Superior Achievement in a Screenplay: Godzilla Minus One >

> Publisher Oni Press has been been busy releasing a new wave of creator-owned titles in 2024, and they won't be slowing down in the latter half of the year. IGN can exclusively reveal Oni's latest new series, a folk-horror comic called The Autumn Kingdom. > >.The Autumn Kingdom is a collaboration between writer Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun) and artist Christopher Mitten (Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.). > > ... > > Here's Oni's official description for The Autumn Kingdom: > >> Bestselling author Andrew Kier found the perfect place to finish his latest dark-fantasy novel—an idyllic, remote cabin on the edge of a lush Swedish forest. His young daughters, Sommer and Winter, gleefully explore . . . until they happen upon a strange clearing of ancient statues: goblins, dwarves, elves, and a warrior queen mysteriously missing her swordhand and weapon. When something sinister follows the girls home and viciously snatches their parents in the night, the sisters’ only hope may be that ancient relic, lost in the forest underbrush, waiting for a new champion to take it up...

> With its folk legends of 'Dandelion Jack', candlelit séances, creepy kids, reanimated rabbits, and grim-faced stars, the rain-lashed and mud-strewn Starve Acre looks like it'll be right at home amongst its rural horror peers. Here's the official synopsis, offering some tantalising clues as to what's going on: "In rural Yorkshire in the 1970s, Richard (Smith) and Juliette Willoughby’s (Clark) seemingly idyllic family life is thrown into turmoil when their young son Owen starts acting out of character. A sudden, tragic event brings grief and drives a wedge between the once happy couple. At Starve Acre, their remote family home, academic archaeologist Richard buries himself in exploring a folkloric myth that the ancient oak tree that once stood on their land is imbued with phenomenal powers. While Juliette turns to the local community to find some kind of peace, Richard obsessively digs deeper. An unexpected discovery soon occupies the couple’s attention and dark and sinister forces, unwittingly allowed into their home, offer a disturbing possibility of reconnection between them." > > ... > > Starve Acre is set to release in UK and Irish cinemas on 6 September. In the meantime, we're off to pour some salt circles and stock up on crucifixes... better safe than sorry!

Trailer

> Most horror films weigh in at around 90 minutes, but first-timers Paul Thomas (screenwriter) and Chris Cronin (director) are in no hurry, using the additional running time to draw the audience into a tangled web of grief and guilt. Although set in 2021, the film bears the influence of British ghost stories and folk horror favourites like The Stone Tape (1972), Quatermass (1979) and The Woman in Black (1989). > > Cronin also employs some effective Blair Witch-inspired techniques, including documentary-style interviews and POV filming to draw us further into the story. But the score, sound design and pitch-perfect performances – not least from Edward-Robinson, who gave up a tech career aged 50 to take up acting – ensure the film’s considerable spell remains unbroken. > > It’s a bleak, brooding tale, steeped in folk mythology and infused with so much atmosphere you may feel the fog closing in around you in the cinema.

> Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark's folk horror Starve Acre has confirmed its UK release date. > > The film, which premiered at last year's BFI London Film Festival to critical acclaim, will arrive in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on September 6. > > Set in rural England in the 1970s, Starve Acre stars Smith and Clark as Richard and Juliette, respectively. Their idyllic family life is turned upside down when their young son starts acting out of character. > > ... > > Discussing the film in a press statement, director Daniel Kokotajlo (Apostasy) said he’s a "sucker" for English folk tales like Starve Acre, which are able to "put a spell" on viewers with their "attitudes and strange sensibilities". > > The filmmaker continued: "It's not just horror; it ends up in a weird, off-kilter place. It can be uncomfortably quiet and sensitive, then suddenly it slaps you in your face with its oddballness. That was the aim of this film: to create a mood of nervousness. > > "Making an audience nervous results in a whole range of reactions: tears, screams or giggles. It's my idea of cathartic fun. > > "Starve Acre also taps into a timeless fear that feels more relevant than ever: the idea that returning home, to nature, and regressing into childhood, is a big mistake. > > "The film removes the nostalgic, rose-tinted glasses and shows us that there are dark things, long-buried superstitions, awaiting our return."

> The ancient grounds of the old St Werburgh's Church in Warburton were transformed into a film set for new folk horror, A Caution for The Wise. > > And the 13th century church, based on Wigsey Lane, has since been described as a ‘one in a million’ film location by film producer, Gaius Brown. > > Filming from both within the grounds of the old church and inside the Grade I listed building can be seen in the new short film which was released earlier this month and is currently circulating film festivals across the country. > > ... > > The short is loosely based on a chapter from the hit 2013 novel 'Skendleby', written by Nick Brown and also based in leafy Cheshire, in the affluent area of Alderley Edge. > > While the old St Werburgh's Church was used as the set for the parish church in the film, other areas of Cheshire were also used during the filming of the horror, including the picturesque grade II listed Hawthorn Cottage located on Twemlow Lane in Cranage.

> Stories rooted in Irish folklore have shown audiences time and again that there is something chilling in the Emerald Isles and Paul Duane’s All You Need Is Death is no exception. A haunted and haunting tale that weaves together ancient folk tales, Irish ballads, and cosmic horror, the film proves to be a satisfying watch even when all the pieces may not fit perfectly together.

Trailer

IMDb

> The film is said to put “a folk horror twist on the story of Job.” Watch the trailer below. > > “Joba and Quincy are a privileged, fiercely progressive Brooklyn couple – they buy the right things, donate to the proper foundations, and march for every just cause. But when their friend, Caleb, returns from a country pilgrimage challenging their bleeding liberal hearts, Quincy is initially skeptical. But when Joba insists they take up an invitation to the same off-grid spot, they are met by a kitschy cabin in the woods peppered with analog devices of a simpler age: a rotary phone, religious iconography, an Edison machine. > > “And when a curiously labeled record plays a menacing message, Joba and Quincy rapidly learn that their bank accounts have been drained, their digital records erased, and their family businesses are collapsing. They try to flee, only to grow more enveloped by the woods.

Trailer

IMDb

> To celebrate 50 years since the cult horror The Wicker Man came to our cinemas, BBC Radio 4 Extra is ‘sacrificing’ its normal evening schedule to bring you five hours of drama, comedy, documentaries and conversations connected to this unique film, its cast and its music. > > The evening will be presented by writer, paranormal psychologist and Celtic pagan, Evelyn Hollow (Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist), who will be introducing highlights such as the world radio debut of an adaptation of The Wicker Man starring Brian Blessed (21:05) and the first broadcast of Christopher Lee’s Desert Island Discs in over 25 years (20:15). > > Evelyn will also be offering up archive featuring among others, Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland and Ingrid Pitt, and in a specially recorded interview Evelyn will be speaking to the Olivier award-winning actress - who not only played the mischievous schoolgirl Daisy Pringle in the film, but who also sang on some of The Wicker Man’s iconic songs - Lesley Mackie (18:45 & 20:55). Come, it is time to keep your appointment with The World of The Wicker Man…