User reviews

There's a lot packed into 3 hours here and while some of it is repetitive, you will definitely see a ton of movies to add to your to watch list. It might have been better served to be a series with different episodes focusing on different countries, but overall it's still a rich source of information and films, so worth checking out.

An outstanding look at the folk horror subgenre. There's lots here I didn't know and it's fun to watch and make a list of all the films you've yet to see, because I can promise you that there will be many you've never even heard of from all sorts of countries. The film is over 3 hours which might make it a bad idea for one seat viewing, but it's just as good if you want to watch it in smaller portions.

An exhaustive and almost exhausting at times documentary on one specific flavour of horror. It was certainly interesting, though, and I feel like it provided a good amount of insight into folk horror. It's one of those genres or sub-genres where you kind of know it when you see it, but it's harder to put into words. Thankfully, this documentary does put it into words.

Maybe too many words? I don't know if this had to be as long as it was, and it being over three hours is going to be something of an obstacle for a lot of people (maybe even myself included). But I still liked this, and there's a lot to like. It's just very, very in-depth and lengthy.

This is a documentary about the history of folk horror; while a good number of writers are cited (M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King), the focus is primarily on film and, in some cases, television programs. Starting with an exploration of such films in the UK and moving on to the very different origins of American folk horror, the film spends its last hour or so talking about folk horror films around the world, particularly in Australia, Brazil, Japan and parts of the former Soviet Union. It's a *very* long film, more than three hours, but the interested viewer will not feel that time drag at all, so engrossing is the topic and so fascinating are the talking heads - and, of course, so terrific are the film clips. I've been interested in folklore and mythology for, oh, 40 years or so now, but this is the first time I've seen such scholarship applied so rigorously to films, many of which were considered schlocky in their time, some considered classics now. Absolutely riveting - but watch at your own peril, because you will find yourself wanting to track down a massive number of films after seeing tantalizing moments from the hundreds referenced here!

Beautiful to look at - the films under discussion are a beguiling bunch and there is some killer montage. I am the proverbial viewer who is happy to sit through 3 hrs plus on his subject. Unfortunately, those hours don't fly by. It is overlong and badly paced. The commentators seem heavy handed, pompous and humourless. Really this film would have been better served as several seperate features - one on British Folk horror, one or more others on the legacies of the colonial past, voodoo, etc. Lacks a tangible central thesis - Candyman, with it's urban setting surely the antithesis of folk horror, is included, with the justification that it is rooted in 'urban legend'. Why not include Alligator then? Why not The Fog? Almost any Dracula movie could be valid, with it's old country curses and whatnot. More relevant, Straw Dogs and The Shout are passed over - neither obscure and extensively covered elsewhere, so not a great loss, but suggestive of the filmmakers wandering interest. At times pedantic (scouring back issues of film journals for fleeting refernces to folk horror, Jonathan Rigby claiming he coined the term) and undisciplined. The interpretations are valid, but expressed in atmosphere of suffocating academic waffling. This is hardly conducive to the mystic weirdness the films themselves exude. The old Linda Blair routine, 'fear-of-female-sexuality' is trotted out. Fear, yes, but thrilling fear! What else is a Horror film supposed to do? Blood On Satan's Claw pretends to decry mob hysteria - but the girls are unambiguously under the influence of a devil, and commit evil and cruel acts - not the best example if one is looking for well thought out social critique. Michael Hordern in 'Whistle and I'll Come, My Lad' is 'almost a symbol of the patriarchy', rather than a pompous and bumbling eccentric. His having encountered a ghost is here presumably secondary to his imagined abuses of power under his professorship. In a way, the assorted commentators resemble the academic protagonists of several films under discussion here - unable to let go and believe, fearful of their own voyeuristic fascinations and clothing them in the respectable manners of the day, unwilling to perceive the true nature of the object of their study until it is to late. It is crucial viewing for those with an interest in the subject because of the many excellent or interesting films covered, but the relentless, one-sided and heavy handed commentary really is wearying - regardless of whether one agrees or not. That said, prepare to add countless titles to your watch list - visually stunning examples from around the world. At heart the appeal of folk horror is the same as the fairy tales and legends culture springs from - the rigidity of modern society makes escape into a bucolic idyll ever more attractive - though for all the talk of matriarchial societies, it's likely that modern living has improved the lot of women considerably. A lot of those tales carried the cautionary message: 'don't stray from the well-worn path', at heart most of these films reiterate this message - unless they are revenge plots. And why do ghosts wait several generations before taking out their ire on the descendants of those who wronged them? Where's the justice in that?

All of the people interviewed were very interesting and informed. I'm more versed on Japanese folk horror, and I ended up writing down 20+ classic and films I want to watch. The depths they plunged into the subject was impressive and enlightening.

It's cut up into chapters, so if 3 hours of video is too much, you could write down the time stamp and chapter and resume it later.

Highly recommend to film buffs.

I really enjoyed this documentary, especially considering that it made me aware of at least two dozen lesser known films that I've watched since then and enjoyed tremendously. However, I'm really annoyed by the way every single damn film is analysed against the backdrop of either race-relations or feminism. Not everything in art, especially the horror genre, has to be turned into some political talking point. Sometimes a great film is just a great film. I would have been a lot more invested in the thing if they'd focused more on the craft of folk horror, such as scenery, archetypal characters etc. But overall this was enjoyable and certainly worth a watch, if just for the niche films that are discussed rather than the (sometimes) unnecessary commentary alongside them.

If you're a horror fan, I have to recommend Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror now available on Shudder A documentary on how regional folklore has been used in horror films.

Beginning with British cinema, then covers this type of horror around the world. It has some examples of this in early silent films, but is primarily how modern filmmakers, since the mid-20th Century have used lore and legends in their films. Often looking at older eras to point out problems in our own.

I loved the documentary and learned quite a bit about the Folk Horror genre and its offshoot. I thought that the chapter on colonialism was the best and would deserved its own feature.

However, it's a lengthy documentary (over 3 hours) that sometimes lost me with a feeling of tediously hammering some points while some other were a lot more nebulously discussed. At times, I even had a hard time figuring out where I was being taken, where the discussed matters were going. I would have also loved to have a little bit more introduction of the guests speakers, some of them I was not certain what their expertise or knowledge was.

That said, the result is visually impressive and clearly shows expertise and skills. As some others mentioned, it would have probably been a little more digestible in form of a series with 6-7 épisodes.

WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED is the folk horror documentary that many of us didn't even know we wanted. It's often a tour-de-force bit of filmmaking with a running time that flies past despite coming in in the region of three and a half hours. The first half is particularly good, charting the usual likes of THE WICKER MAN, WITCHFINDER GENERAL and BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW before looking at the origins of the genre and then moving to study the format in America and Australia. I thought the second half feels a lot more rushed; it turns into a virtual clip compilation and I would have liked much more insight and background into the intriguing foreign films shown.

The analysis tends to be a little too political and academic for my taste, and some of the subject matter transitions are a little rushed and confusing, but the overall film becomes more than the sum of its parts and takes on a life and a magic of its own. It's an often mesmerizing documentary and I was sad when it ended despite its 3+ hour runtime. It would be difficult to find a more thorough overview of the subject.

This documentary was fascinating in a lot of ways but they ruined it with their heavily biased leftist ideology. This was disappointing but I'm not surprised since the left has totally taken over cinema. Also, don't watch this if you don't like spoilers because they reveal spoilers for quite a few of the movies.

A broad anthology of folk lore films. I got a long list of movies to study up on from this by taking notes. It's a bit long and they refer to some movies multiple times and others are entirely omitted like "Photographing Fairies" or "Rare Exports". But who am I kidding, they'll never read this.

As usual, people with connections got here first to give this flick a "10-out-of-10" rating, a dead giveaway that something is very wrong. I hate how these idiots have corrupted a good source of information, into a system where we have to return in 2-3 years when the rating has leveled off into a realistic number. Anyhow, the film's subject matter and movie poster promise an interesting foray into a form of fantasy and horror that I've always greatly enjoyed, folk tales. What you get, unfortunately, is a huge outpouring of uninteresting and even hard to follow "viewpoints" from a variety of "experts". A few of these people come from the school of "If I wave my hands about constantly while speaking, everyone will be captivated and assured that I'm absolutely fascinating". Believe me, they are not, in fact, most of what they have to say is recycled over and over until I finally said out loud "YEAH I GET IT!". I thought at the very least this "history" would turn me on to a few films I've missed, and I did get a couple names, but if that was part of their intentions, they didn't do a very good job. I'm disappointed, but hoping that someday someone else will create a much much better film.

Featuring numerous excerpts from a broad range of folk horror movies throughout history, this is the most comprehensive study of the sub-genre imaginable. While it begins by covering 3 very significant examples of the subject in Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan's Claw and The Wicker Man, it goes on to profile an exhaustive list of films from all over the world.

There are some beautiful transitional sequences animated by underground filmmaker Guy Maddin.

Among the clips included are scenes from The Company Of Wolves, The Lair Of The White Worm, Wake In Fright as well as countless other treasures of this unique genre. While it is a fairly lengthy examination of its subject I, being a huge fan of horror films in general and folk horror in particular, was riveted.

It's a reasonably comprehensive look at folk horror, seen mainly through the lens of movies.

The talking heads are all erudite and provide interesting bits and bobs throughout the hefty runtime. There is no real 'arc' to the story of the documentary - it's basically a chronological trek through selected folk horror stories from beginning to end.

If you happen to already be a fan of folk horror then this will be absolutely perfect for you - it's an intelligent and respectful look at the importance of our myths.

If you have only a passing interest, this doc won't make you love folk horror. It's humourless and only interested in chewing over the context and subtext of specific tales for hours and hours. Its narrow focus will likely bore some viewers to tears.

So I'd recommend it with those caveats. It's good, but deliberately esoteric.

This was a documentary that I sought out to watch while I was working. I work in a cubicle so I wanted something that I could listen to and watch when needed. Folk horror is a subgenre that piques my interest so knowing that this was streaming on Shudder gave me one to watch.

Now this documentary is broken up into chapters. Each one either focuses on the history, a country or a grouping of countries to delve into what was the inspiration of this subgenre as well as how similar and different these tales are. That worked for me quite a bit. There are titles here that I've seen and they tend to be more of the heavy hitters. I also came away with more titles that I'm adding to my ever-growing list of movies to see.

This is also well-made. There are clips and images from the movies that are edited in. That helps to give a better idea of what this is conveying. We also get talking heads here of experts and filmmakers in the subgenre as well. That helps here to get a better idea of what they're conveying as well. I'm glad that I watched this as it gives me a different way of looking at movies I've seen before. I'm also more curious now for a deeper dive into folk horror as well. I'd highly recommend it to horror fans, especially of these types of movies.

My Rating: 8 out of 10.

A three and a quarter hour documentary looking into the history of folk horror in film and television.

I will admit that my understanding of folk horror was that it was about pagan rituals, something strange in the woods and, anything involving witches. So, by extension I considered that the arguably most famous and potentially only films made in this genre ie 'the infernal trio', were Blood on Satan's Claw, Witchfinder General and of course The Wicker Man.

This documentary, divided into 6 sections, has various people, all who seem to write about folk horror, use often extraordinary words I've never heard before and frequently intense explanations to introduce us to the wide and wild world of folk horror. It is long and for the most part it is talking head/clip/talking head etc but you can't say you don't emerge from this without a far more detailed understanding of the subject and having seen clips of seemingly every folk horror film ever made.

Pro: Wildly ambitious project

Con: Overly (OVERLY) edited

Summary: Impressed that the producer/director split this documentary into six 'episodes' which can be watched separately. However, the content and the editing of that content is somewhat patchy (disclaimer: I'm a serious horror fan, esp UK 60s folk horror) so whilst I'd like to rate this more highly I cannot.

Blah, blah, blah, & etc! Insufferable snobbish commentaries by self proclaimed know-it-alls who micro-analyze horror using trendy pop-psych platitudes ad nauseum until you either fall asleep or click off as I did!

I used to enjoy many of these films before I was subjected to the pooled ignorance of these prattling "experts" telling me what and how to think about them!

Why do these people feel they are somehow doing us a supreme service by droning on and on about why a film has social relevance or was ahead of its time or how it taps into this or that psychological aspect of the collective social consciousness?? What a snore!!

If you like being told what to think and feel about this or that film by a bunch of self-important windbags, maybe this film will appeal to you.

But as for me, include me out!!

A lot of pretentious opinionated nonsense from people of little foundational knowledge.

When I saw this advertised I thought it might be quite interesting - how folk lore has influenced horror.

Within the first ten minutes it became quite clear that we we being fed very vague opinionated pieces by pseudo-intellectuals.

By the end most of it had become politicised clap-trap often with incorrect information, particularly from a historical perspective.

There were a few good short pieces from some filmmakers who explain the influences on their films. These were interesting but few and far between.

In the end this just drags on and on with a tedious array.idiots with opinions.

There are much better documentaries on the subject worth watching.