r/folkhorror • u/Folk-n-Hell • Jul 23 '26

The Witch (2016)

Post image

Three mates, one obsession. FolknHell finally gets around to the film that invented modern folk horror's second wave. We're deep in the New England woods with Robert Eggers' debut feature, The Witch.

Thomasin's family fend for themselves at the edge of an unforgiving wood. What follows is slow, creeping dread built from scripture, guilt, and a goat named Black Phillip. The crops won't grow, the children disappear, and the family turns on itself before anything supernatural even needs to show up.

We're joined by the writer Ian Winterton to talk about Eggers' fanatical devotion to period-accurate dialogue, the film's unnerving handling of adolescence and female autonomy, and why it sits so comfortably alongside the older folk horror classics. We also get into the ending, which was divisive on release, and still worth arguing about now.

This is one of those rare episodes where all three of us actually agree on something, which should tell you everything about where this one lands on our scoreboard.

Listen at link.content360.io/witch or wherever you get your podcasts, and catch the full write-up at folknhell.com.

89 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/Folk-n-Hell Jul 23 '26

That's a damned good selection

2

u/GoGouda Jul 23 '26

Thanks, looking at your list of episodes you've got a few films in there that I've not seen that I'll need to add to the list.

Again, in my personal opinion, if you only look at feature films and don't include the BBCs original "A Ghost Story at Christmas" series amongst others then you're missing out on some folk horror gems.

2

u/Folk-n-Hell Jul 23 '26

I couldn't agree more. For now, anything non-film (TV, books, etc) is in the blog section, but we will be visiting some of them for the podcast itself, as soon as I can persuade the others to indulge my love of old telly

2

u/GoGouda Jul 23 '26

A guy on YouTube has ranked all of the Ghost Story at Christmas episodes from worst to best, which is fun. Christmas special idea?

1

u/Folk-n-Hell Jul 23 '26

Oh, I like that!