A Brief History of Occult and Folk Horror

Article originally published in New Empress Magazine. Being old and feeling almost excavated from some grainy piece of earth, silent horror has the unnerving sense of being a genuine piece of documentation. No doubt unaware of it at the time, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922) is a film that so embodies this accidental aspect that viewing it recalls the feeling of Ash’s … Continue reading A Brief History of Occult and Folk Horror

The Wicker Man – Robin Hardy (1973)

The sub-genre of Folk Horror is possibly the oddest mixture of ideals and ideas ever to join in the world of cinema.  Trying to envision a genre taking best aspects from Folk tradition and mix it with the scary and disturbing edges of Horror can be difficult to imagine. However, amongst this small group of films, all of which are brilliant, sits one that transcends the … Continue reading The Wicker Man – Robin Hardy (1973)