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Posted on June 20, 2020

Midsommar and Cross-Quarter Day Horror

Guest Post

Halloween has long been the basis for horror celebrations, but it was made canonical for horror films with John Carpenter’s debut film, Halloween (1978), which uses the holiday as the basis for a supernatural Michael Myers to take vengeance on naughty teenagers. The origin of Halloween is Samhain, one of four Celtic cross-quarter days. The other three, one of which already has an iconic horror film associated with it, are Imbolc (February 2), Beltane (May 1), and Lughnasadh (August 1). Cross-quarter days fall roughly midway between the solstices and equinoxes, each of which also has ancient religious celebrations. The iconic cross-quarter horror film mentioned is, of course, Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973), and it is set during the time of Beltane.

Apart from seventies styles, The Wicker Man has held up remarkably well. Sergeant Howie, a Scottish police officer, is lured to Summerisle, a remote Hebridean island, to investigate a missing child. He’s been set up, however, by the islanders who need an outsider to sacrifice on their May Day celebrations. Although they never call the holiday Beltane, that is the title of the Gaelic spring festival that dates back to the tenth century. The Wicker Man has received accolades that have grown over the years. It’s been a kind of gold standard for intelligent horror.

Posted on September 13, 2019

Doomwatch: Hybrid Folk Horror

Dawn Keetley

Doomwatch (1972) is infrequently cited in the burgeoning scholarly and popular conversations on folk horror, and yet I would argue that it is in fact a key text.[i] Its hybrid generic form manifests both what is and what is not folk horror; it exemplifies folk horror, in other words, both positively and negatively. Indeed, the Doomwatch’s shift toward the end is a brilliant illustration of how the trajectory of the folk horror plot can be negated.

The 1972 Doomwatch (called Island of the Ghouls in the US, emphasizing its ‘horror’) was directed by Peter Sasdy, who also directed 1972’s The Stone Tape (written by Nigel Kneale), a staple of the folk horror canon. The screenplay was written by Clive Exton, and the film was produced by Tigon British Film Productions, the company behind such folk horror classics as Witchfinder General (1968) and The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971). Doomwatch is based on the BBC series of the same name, which ran between 1970 and 1972. Both film and TV series feature a government agency called the Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work, dedicated to tracking down unethical and dangerous scientific research.

Posted on April 7, 2019

Pet Sematary as Folk Gothic

Dawn Keetley

A couple of articles have suggested that the 2019 Pet Sematary (directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer) amplifies the “folk horror” of Stephen King’s novel (1983) and of Mary Lambert’s film (1989). It does, perhaps most noticeably in the addition of the masked children forming a “procession” to the cemetery (though this ritual ends up being much less important to the film than the trailer makes it appear). As I began thinking about Pet Sematary as folk horror, though, it occurred to me that the film actually seems more akin to what we might call “folk gothic”—and that there is a significant difference between the two.[i] So, while recognizing the slipperiness of both “folk horror” and “folk gothic,” this essay represents my effort to think through, with Pet Sematary, what “folk gothic” is.[ii]

Posted on February 6, 2019

Calibre – New Folk Horror?

Dawn Keetley

Calibre is a brilliant Scottish thriller released in 2018 and directed and written by Matt Palmer, who has previously made two short horror films, The Gas Man (2014) and Island (2007). The film features two late-twenty-something men, Vaughn (Jack Lowden) and Marcus (Martin McCann) who head from Edinburgh up into the Highlands to hunt, an activity Vaughn is less than enthusiastic about. They arrive at the Highland village of Culcarran (filmed on location in Leadhills and Beatock in South Lanarkshire) and head straight out for a raucous night at the local pub, replete with enticing local girls. Vaughn, who has a pregnant fiancée, resists temptation and only talks with Iona (Kate Bracken), but Marcus does rather more with the clearly dangerous Kara (Kitty Lovett). Despite hangovers, both men head off the next morning to hunt deer, as planned, but they’re involved in a terrible accident and almost immediately lose control of the spiraling, out-of-control consequences.

Posted on October 14, 2018

3 Films That Explain Apostle

Dawn Keetley

Obviously my title here is reductive. No three films can explain any other, especially when that other film is Apostle, the enormously rich new folk horror film by Gareth Evans. But this is a series we’re running (3 films that explain another)—and these three films do explain some things about Apostle, if not everything.

They are The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973) –not surprising because so far virtually everyone has compared the film to Hardy’s classic folk horror film—The Village (M. Night Shyamalan, 2004 ), and mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017), a film I express my loathing for here, but which is nonetheless an important film.