r/folkhorror

The Wicker Man is a musical. A police procedural folk horror mystery musical. It opens with a mainland copper (Edward Woodward) flying to a remote Scottish island to investigate a missing child, and within twenty minutes he's watching a schoolteacher explain to children that the maypole is a giant penis while a naked woman awaits in a graveyard next door.

It’s a horror film that commits almost entirely to not feeling like one. There are no shadows, no jump scares, no ominous scores creeping under the dialogue. It looks like a tourism video for a very progressive Scottish island.

The film works as a trap, and crucially, it traps you the same way it traps Sergeant Howie. You follow his investigation, and you don't notice until quite late that you've been given absolutely no reason to trust his version of events. Howie is not a reliable moral compass. He's a rigid, sexually repressed, self-righteous man whose own certainty makes him exactly the instrument the island needs. The horror is that nobody forces him into anything. His faith, his pride, his refusal to compromise. He brings his fate upon himself.

In the new FolknHell podcast, we pay a visit to Summerisle.

https://www.folknhell.com/the-wicker-man-review

Hail the Queen of the May!

Sculptures by Sophie Prestigiacomo

I’ve been digging through the archives of Bitlis for months, tracking a shadow everyone else is too afraid to name: Belkiz. This isn’t your typical ghost story. It’s about a village where babies were born without eyes, where nature went stone-cold silent, and a woman who fed on their desperation.

I’m currently finishing a raw documentary/visual sequence of what I’ve found. It’s dark, it’s ugly, and it’s real. If your stomach is strong enough for some authentic Anatolian folk horror, stay tuned. I might drop the link here when I'm done. Or maybe I should just keep this buried. What do you think?

I’m editing the final sequence now. It’s grim, grain-heavy, and unforgiving. If you want to see what actual ancient horror looks like in the high altitudes of Turkey, wait for my link. If not, keep scrolling and enjoy your bedtime stories.

How far down would you go for your deepest desires?

The Bottomless

a Sean Cranston production

While the stop motion and unusual puppetry is so prevalent in his work and what drew me to Alice and Faust, I more so wanted to throw this out into the world and ask if anyone was familiar with the artist who animated the narrated portion of the film. In this portion, Alžbětka reads out the traditional/source fairytale that inspired the story, snippets are seen (the last two images attached) and the style is so painterly and beautiful! I don't know if they are paper puppets, or frame by frame, but I am desperate to find out the name of the artist or find the whole thing in sequence. Just eager to know anything at all as seeking it online has not revealed much so far unfortunately!

Desire Has No End.

THE BOTTOMLESS

A Sean Cranston production

Coming Soon