Lord of Misrule does not so much ease you into folk horror as shove your face straight into the maypole. From the opening moments it is corn dollies, pagan ornaments, horned skulls, chanting villagers and ominous festival prep. Within minutes we were all saying the same thing: “this thing is leaking folk horror out of its pores”. There is no slow burn here. It is folk horror turned up to eleven before anyone has had time to ask what day it is.

The setup is classic. A newly arrived vicar and her family move to a remote English village just in time for the annual harvest festival. Bells ring, Morris men bash sticks, bonfires crackle, and the whole thing feels like a village fete that has quietly joined a cult. When the vicar’s daughter is chosen as the Harvest Angel and then disappears mid celebration, the film should snap into panic mode. Instead, the reaction is oddly muted. As we put it at the time, “this is concern, not dread”, and that lack of urgency hangs over the rest of the film like damp bunting.

A lot of our frustration comes from how early everything is signposted. We know something is wrong almost immediately, and the film never really pretends otherwise. Unlike The Wicker Man, where discoveries unfold alongside the central character, here we are always ahead of the game. The villagers feel practised rather than secretive, the rituals rehearsed rather than inherited. The moment we kept coming back to was the Lord of Misrule silencing the crowd with a single strike of his staff. It looks impressive, but it also prompted the very FolknHell reaction of, “this feels less like tradition and more like a very well run rehearsal”.

There are strong elements scattered throughout. The children are genuinely unsettling, the imagery often striking, and Ralph Ineson brings real weight and authority to his role. He hints at grief, belief, and something deeply personal beneath the mask. Unfortunately, the script rarely gives him or anyone else the space to explore why they believe in this ritual beyond the fact that the plot demands it. Several characters feel underwritten, especially the husband, who mostly exists to look baffled until things are already on fire. Exposition replaces investigation, and key revelations are explained rather than uncovered.

By the final act, Lord of Misrule commits fully to its folk horror identity. Old gods, sacrifice, and shifting power structures all come into play. It absolutely counts as folk horror, but it is folk horror by the book, with most of the answers written in bold on page one. As we summed it up round the table, “everything’s here, apart from the drama”.

The FolknHell score lands at 16 out of 30, which feels about right. This is a watchable, decent effort with strong atmosphere and some memorable moments, but it lacks the restraint and mystery needed to truly get under the skin. Worth a look, unlikely to haunt you, and a reminder that sometimes a harvest festival is far creepier when it looks normal first.

Film Site References

Wikipedia

Rotten Tomatoes

Riverstone Pictures

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Witchfinder General finally gets its turn under the FolknHell microscope and immediately starts causing problems. It turns up with a big reputation a lot of baggage and the confidence of a film that has been told for decades that it belongs in the folk horror big leagues. The trouble is once you actually sit down and watch it that claim starts wobbling almost immediately.

The set up is simple and relentlessly grim. Matthew Hopkins a self appointed witchfinder rides from village to village across East Anglia turning petty grudges fear and sexual repression into a very profitable little business. People accuse their neighbours not because they genuinely believe in witchcraft but because it is useful. Hopkins is not uncovering ancient evils or dark rituals. He is just a horrible man spotting an opportunity and taking it.

This is where the argument really kicks off around the table. There is no sense of shared belief. No community bound together by folklore. No land that feels cursed or alive or pushing back. Compared with The Wicker Man or Blood on Satan’s Claw where belief itself becomes the monster Witchfinder General feels hollow. The countryside looks lovely but does absolutely nothing except provide somewhere for people to be tortured.

That does not mean it is toothless. Far from it. This is a late 1960s British exploitation film and it is not shy about it. The violence is blunt nasty and often mean spirited. There are hangings burnings stabbings and a lot of deeply uncomfortable sexual menace. Watching it now feels less like being scared and more like being slowly worn down which depending on your mood may or may not be your idea of a good evening.

Vincent Price is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. His accent belongs exclusively to Vincent Price and nobody else but his presence is undeniable. One of us was all in calling this one of his best performances. The other two were less convinced but still admitted that without him the whole thing would collapse in a heap of mud wigs and bad decisions.

At one point the film gets described as a 15th century John Wick which is both surprisingly accurate and probably kinder than it deserves. Strip away the period trappings and what you have is a revenge story about abuse of power with no interest at all in the supernatural. Which brings us neatly back to the big question. Why does this keep getting called folk horror.

By the time the scores were handed out the damage was done. A combined 12 out of 30 says it all. One FolknHeller respected the rawness and Price’s performance. The other two mostly wanted it to be over and were still baffled by its genre credentials.

Witchfinder General is important. It is influential. It is also a slog and about as folk horror as a bloke in a big hat being awful to everyone he meets. Worth watching once for context and conversation. Just do not expect ancient gods cursed fields or anything lurking in the hedgerows apart from another reason to argue.

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A wealthy Korean American family hires a team of spiritual specialists after their daughter starts screaming the house down thanks to a furious ancestor. Andy, Dave, and David follow the trail as the Scooby Doo crew of geomancers, shamans, and funeral whisperers are flown in to sort out the cursed feng shui. It begins simply enough. Move granddad to a nicer bit of land, make his afterlife more pleasant, try not to set anything on fire. Then they open the coffin and a snake with a woman’s head slides out. Things go downhill from there.

Granddad turns out to be a collaborator from the Japanese occupation, buried on poisoned land, and very keen on terrorising his own descendants. His ghost pops up in mirrors, squeezes hearts, and generally behaves like the world’s worst patriarch. Once he is dealt with, the film cheerfully announces that there is an enormous coffin hidden underneath his grave. Of course there is. Inside is a giant samurai, pinned upright through the chest with a sword and absolutely not in the mood for reconciliation.

From there it all escalates. Exploding pig sheds. Monks being flung about. A fireball streaking across the sky that looks suspiciously like Monkey from Monkey Magic. The shamans work overtime. The geomancer questions every life choice that led him here. And the three of us attempt to keep up with the folklore, the history, and the subtitles, which sometimes appear to have been written by a cheerful intern with Google Translate.

The big argument comes when we try to decide if Exhuma counts as folk horror. Andy swears it does because the whole story is steeped in Korean folklore, national wounds, and the idea of land holding centuries of rage. Dave sees it more as a straight horror film with history glued on top. David goes in thinking it is folk horror, then changes his mind halfway through, then changes it again. Which is very on brand for David.

What we do all agree on is that the Scooby Doo crew are brilliant. They feel like real people with real skills, not just exposition machines, and the film wisely keeps them alive. For a two and a quarter hour horror film, it rips along with barely a moment to breathe, and even when we have no idea what is happening we are having a great time.

Exhuma shocked us with how spectacular it is. Massive in scale, rich in folklore, packed with ideas, and somehow still funny in places where it should not be. It also made ninety four million dollars and became the sixth biggest South Korean film ever, so clearly the rest of the world had as much fun as we did.

A wild, baffling, folklore soaked ride that we happily dropped a score of twenty two out of thirty on

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