Folk Horror

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is the first feature-length documentary on the history of folk horror, exploring the phenomenon from its beginnings in a trilogy of films - Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973) - through its proliferation on British television in the 1970s and its culturally specific manifestations in Am...Read More

In 1983, acclaimed photographer Avery Crounse made his debut as writer/director with what is considered to be the seminal American folk horror film. Misunderstood by audiences and mishandled by distributors, it has remained virtually unseen until now: On the 18th-century frontier, an adulterous preacher and his followers flee to 'the promised land' only to enter a v...Read More

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light tells the story of Max, a young record store clerk who stumbles upon a rare vinyl LP and is drawn into the world of a 1970s hippie commune. An invitation to the remnants of the outlandish cult and their unholy spawn leads to grave and grisly circumstances for Max and her friends. The film's producers, led by cult director Chr...Read More

A white lawyer arrives at a remote area in Northern Ontario to defend Indigenous activists who are blocking a logging company's clearcut of old growth on their land. A pacifist by nature, and perceiving himself as sympathetic to Indigenous concerns, he finds his values shaken when he is paired with an angry, rogue Indigenous activist named Arthur - played by one of ...Read More

Fascinating and imaginative, this riveting fantasy thriller from director Neil Jordan (Interview With The Vampire) brings the timeless tale of "Little Red Riding Hood" and werewolf fables together in a haunting, compelling, and eerie way. A wise grandmother (Angela Lansbury) tells her granddaughter Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) a disturbing tale of innocent maidens fal...Read More

The debut feature film by acclaimed Finnish cinematographer and documentarian Erik Blomberg, this "fascinating, intoxicating and truly haunting folk horror fairy tale" (Behind The Couch) remains a pioneering shocker of shamanism, vampirism and female sexuality: Unknowingly born a witch, a frustrated young Lapland wife shapeshifts into a bloodthirsty white reindeer w...Read More

It has been acclaimed as “visually amazing” (Videoscope), “deeply disturbing” (BBC Radio One), “a must-see for serious horror buffs” (Film Review), and compared to the works of Bergman, Bava and Argento. Now experience the modern Nunsploitation masterpiece from co-writer/director Mariano Baino as you’ve never seen or heard it before: When a young Englishwoman attemp...Read More

Follows a land surveyor on an assignment to measure an ancient forest for a developer but soon loses his reason in a supernatural environment that has its own plans.

In 19th century Russia, a seminary student is forced to spend three nights with the corpse of a beautiful young witch. But when she rises from the dead to seduce him, it will summon a nightmare of fear, desire and the ultimate demonic mayhem. Bursting with startling imagery and stunning practical effects by directors Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, this fo...Read More

One by one the teens of Kangaloola High are visited by a skull-faced Aboriginal apparition in their nightmares, and one by one they meet a violent end. In their dreams, a kadaicha stone is thrust into their hand--a stone which follows them into the waking world and condemns them to death for breaking tribal law. When Gail Sorensen, the daughter of a land developer w...Read More

This startling first feature by iconic Philippines' filmmaker Mike De Leon was rediscovered thanks to its inclusion in the documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched as well as 2022 retrospective screenings at The Cannes Film Festival and The Museum of Modern Art. Originally released in 1976 as Itim, it remains "a fascinating foray into supernatural horror" (Rowe...Read More

The second film by frequent Fellini collaborator Brunello Rondi, Il Demonio is a stunning story of obsessive love, set in a rural Southern Italian village where Christianity has integrated many of the old superstitious beliefs. Daliah Lavi plays the film's central character, Purif, who is distraught when her lover (Frank Wolff) is betrothed to another. When she summ...Read More

"There's nothing else that's ever been made that's like The Wolf House." — Ari Aster (Hereditary). A fraught fever dream of a fairy tale from Chile inspired in part by the nightmarish goings-on at the Pinochet regime's "Colonia Dignidad," The Wolf House is something like a Little Red Riding Hood narrated by the wolf. The Wolf House is a film of constant disorienting...Read More

A domestic hit in Poland on first release, Marek Piestrak’s stunning wintry werewolf film is a sexually-charged folktale that pits a 19th century Polish patriot against the ghost of his unfaithful wife, who haunts him from beyond the grave as a she-wolf.

From award-winning Argentinian writer/director Leonardo Favio (ANICETO) comes this "beautiful, hypnotic and ahead of its time" (Terror Weekend) adaptation of the infamous Paraguayan Guarani folk horror legend: Despite warnings from a local witch that he will carry the werewolf curse, the seventh son of a family of sons is born and given the holy name Nazareno Cruz a...Read More

Veteran British chiller writer John Bowen penned this legendarily horrific episode of the BBC's 'Play For Today' series which is now considered a precursor to The Wicker Man. Norah Palmer (Anna Cropper) moves to a quiet village in England after a break-up. The locals are warm enough at first and before long she is pregnant from a relationship with a local lad. But t...Read More

NOVEMBER is set in a pagan Estonian village where werewolves, the plague, and spirits roam. Rainer Sarnet’s third feature film is a bold, twisted fairy tale about unrequited love. In NOVEMBER, the villagers’ main problem is how to survive the cold, dark winter. And, to that aim, nothing is taboo. People steal from each other, from their German manor lords, from spir...Read More

In director Fabrice du Welz's Calvaire, a traveling entertainer is on his way home for Christmas when his van breaks down in the middle of a village, where he quickly falls victim to a dangerously unhinged innkeeper determined to keep him captive. This dark, unsettling film from the New French Extremity movement is available for the first in the US in high definitio...Read More

Secluded in a desolate forest home to little more than the decaying remnants of the past, a broken family is further torn apart by a mysterious death. Adam, guided by a pervasive sense of dread, hunts for answers only to learn that they are not alone; an insidious presence by the name of Sator has been observing his family, subtly influencing all of them for years i...Read More

With its super-saturated color palette, tenebrous art design and electrifying soundtrack, Two Witches presents two truly terrifying conjoined tales of witchery, paranoia and terror that hark back to the gory thrills of classic Euro horrors such as Suspiria, Shock  and The Beyond. Expectant young mother Sarah is convinced she has been given the evil eye from a myster...Read More

This trio of atmospheric horror tales start with: Il Telefono (The Telephone) A woman terrorized in her apartment by phone calls from an escaped prisoner from her past; I Wurdulak" - Vladimire d'Urfe (The Wurdalak) Starring Boris Karloff plays a Russian count in the early 1800s who stumbles upon a family in the countryside trying to destroy a particularly vicious li...Read More

aka The Death Wheelers. 'Seven suicides!' screamed the posters, 'and they roared back as The Living Dead!' In this cult classic, Nicky Henson stars as the leader of motorcycle gang whose pact with Satan grants life him after death. After convincing his cohorts to commit their own creative self-destructions, the bikers burst from their graves to wreak havoc, taunt th...Read More