Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.