FolknHell
by Andrew Davidson, Dave Houghton, David Hall
FolknHell is the camp-fire you shouldn’t have wandered up to: a loud, spoiler-packed podcast where three unapologetic cine-goblins – host Andy Davidson and his horror-hungry pals David Hall & Dave Houghton, decide two things about every movie they watch: 1, is it folk-horror, and 2, is it worth your precious, blood-pumping time. Armed with nothing but “three mates, a microphone, and an unholy amount of spoilers” Intro-transcript the trio torch-walk through obscure European oddities, cult favourites and fresh nightmares you’ve never heard of, unpacking the myths, the monsters and the madness along the way. Their rule-of-three definition keeps every discussion razor-sharp: the threat must menace an isolated community, sprout from the land itself, and echo older, folkloric times. Each episode opens with a brisk plot rundown and spoiler warning, then erupts into forensic myth-picking, sound-design geekery and good-natured bickering before the lads slap down
Episodes
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Hereditary
Ari Aster’s Hereditary starts with a funeral and somehow finds several worse places to go. FolknHell talks miniatures, grief, ritual, Paimon, a house with no air in it and whether this ferocious family nightmare really belongs in folk horror. Hereditary (2018) does not so much build tension as…
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The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project became a phenomenon by convincing audiences there might really be something in the woods. FolknHell goes back to Burkittsville to ask what remains once the marketing fog clears, whether the film still works, and whether a few bound twigs are enough to make it folk horror....
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The Borderlands
FolknHell heads to a remote Devon church for Elliot Goldner’s found-footage horror The Borderlands, also known as Final Prayer. There are Vatican sceptics, far too many explanations about cameras, an older belief system under the floorboards, and an ending that finally remembers how horrible all…
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Loner
Charlie Robb’s Loner (2025) drops a lonely, deeply unreliable vlogger into the Northumbrian woods and lets social-media fakery collide with something that may be older, hungrier and considerably less interested in Wi-Fi. FolknHell asks whether this is folk horror, horror-comedy, or folk horror...
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Rose Of Nevada
Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada gives FolknHell a lost fishing boat, a thirty-year time slip, suspiciously dead fish and a surprisingly strong case for Cornish folk horror. Andy, David and Dave agree on the film. The timeline is another matter entirely. Spoilers throughout. Watch the film first…
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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
FolknHell tackles Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), its still-shocking violence, suspicious barbecue and surprisingly solid claim to American folk horror. Also, this is Take Two because somebody forgot to press record. Spoilers throughout. Watch the film first if you would rather...
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His House
Bol and Rial escape South Sudan, enter the British asylum system and discover that trauma has followed them into the wallpaper. FolknHell debate Remi Weekes's His House, its terrifying apeth and whether travelling folklore still counts as folk horror. A grim English house, a Dinka night witch and...
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The Witch
FolknHell enters Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2016) with special guest Ian Winterton. Is this the perfect modern folk horror film, or does its Christian Devil complicate the usual ancient-threat rules? Expect Puritan pride, phenomenal performances, baby mush and Black Phillip at full gallop. Full...
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The Blood On Satan's Claw
FolknHell dig up The Blood On Satan’s Claw, Piers Haggard’s 1971 folk horror classic, originally released as Satan’s Skin, and ask, "Is it one of the true pillars of the genre, or just a disjointed rural nightmare with excellent eyebrows?" Spoilers throughout, obviously. If you have not seen the...
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Hokum
A remote hotel. A haunted honeymoon suite. A chalk circle that really should have been finished properly. Hokum gives us scares, screams and one very busy dumbwaiter, but does it give us folk horror? Full Description In this episode the FolknHell trio check into Hokum, Damien McCarthy’s 2026…
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Kill List
A hitman thriller that slowly mutates into something ancient, ritualistic and deeply disturbing. The more we watched Kill List, the less certain we became about what we were actually seeing. Ben Wheatley's Kill List has built a reputation as one of the most important British horror films of the...
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Night Of The Demon
Stone circles, satanic runes and one of the greatest horror performances in British cinema. Andy, Dave and David are joined by legendary horror author Ramsey Campbell to dig into Night of the Demon, a film that helped shape folk horror decades before the genre even had a label. The demon gets...
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Men
A country retreat should be peaceful. Unless every man you meet has the same face, the same blame, and eventually, rather more birth canal than anyone ever asked for! Alex Garland’s Men follows Harper, played by Jessie Buckley, as she retreats to a rural house after the violent death of her...
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The Wicker Man
A policeman, a pagan island, and one of the most famous endings in horror cinema. Andy, Dave and David head to Summerisle for The Wicker Man and get into its strange musical spell, its battle of belief systems, and the question of whether this is still the defining folk horror film or simply the...
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A Dark Song
A house sealed in salt is already a bad sign. Spending a year inside it with grief, lies and ceremonial magic makes it worse. FolknHell tackles A Dark Song: grief, ritual magic, guardian angels, and whether this eerie occult chamber piece counts as folk horror. The film is Liam Gavin’s 2016…
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In The Earth
In this episode of FolknHell, we head into the fungal murk of In the Earth (2021), Ben Wheatley’s strange, abrasive, hallucinatory pandemic folk horror, where science, ritual, sound and landscape all start speaking the same unnerving language. What begins as a journey into the woods to assist…
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Frewaka
Irish fairies, Catholic guilt and one extremely ominous red door. Frewaka is exactly the sort of film FolknHell should fall for, which made it all the more annoying when it kept wandering off into the mist with its own plot. Episode summary Frewaka arrives wearing all the right clothes for folk...
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Sator
Sator is what happens when you leave one filmmaker alone in the woods for seven years with a camera, a toolbox, and a grudge against comfort. Jordan Graham does practically everything here, including dragging planks up a mountain and building the actual cabin, which explains why the film feels…
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Bring Her Back
Grief turns feral, rituals turn bloody and nobody should watch this one alone. Bring Her Back drags folk horror into the present and bites hard. Bring Her Back unsettled us in a way that crept under the skin and refused to leave. This is not a jump scare merchant or a knowing wink horror. It is...
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Angel Heart
A noir detective chases a debt through voodoo, fate and the Devil himself. Stylish, slippery and oddly folky. Worth the descent. A humid nightmare of ceiling fans, cigarette smoke and moral rot, Angel Heart pulls FolknHell into unfamiliar territory and dares the trio to get snobbish. A private...
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Lord Of Misrule
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...
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Witchfinder General
Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968) is supposed to be one of British folk horror's sacred texts. FolknHell has questions. Vincent Price terrorises East Anglia, the violence gets nastier than Hammer, and the whole thing starts looking suspiciously like a revenge film with a very good hat....
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Exhuma
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…
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Enys Men
Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men gives the trio one of their most intricate puzzles yet, a film that marries Cornish landscape, ritual repetition, and fractured time into something hypnotic and quietly unsettling. Set on a remote stone island off the Cornish coast, the story follows an unnamed volunteer…
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Rabbit Trap & Starve Acre - Double Bill
In the Welsh Valleys and Yorkshire fields, something stirs. Two couples, two hauntings; one whispered through fairy rings, the other screamed through roots and ritual. Rabbit Trap offers tenderness in the face of loss; Starve Acre finds horror in what the land remembers. Our Halloween special, a...
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November
A starving village, a lovesick girl, and a devil with a taste for mischief. This week on Folk ’n’ Hell enters the snow-caked world of November (2017), Rainer Sarnet’s monochrome masterpiece of Estonian folklore and unrequited love. Adapted from Andrus Kivirähk’s novel, it is part fairy tale, part...
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Hellbender
A mother and daughter rock band film themselves into witchcraft legend. Hellbender (2021) is the Adams family’s lockdown-born tale of spells, riffs, and rebellion, brewed in the forests of upstate New York. FolknHell dives into its homemade horror, punk-fuelled ambition, and questionable folk...
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Azrael
In this episode of FolknHell, Andy, Dave, and David take on Azrael (2024), Simon Barrett and E.L. Katz’s tense, wordless horror starring Samara Weaving. Set after the Rapture, the film drops us into a mute Christian fundamentalist cult who have severed their vocal cords in pursuit of purity, and...
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Laurin
In this episode of Folk ’n’ Hell, Andy, David, and Dave dive into Laurin (1989), Robert Sigl’s German oddity that blurs the line between fairy tale, Hammer horror homage, and supernatural thriller. Set in a rural village where children begin to vanish, the film follows nine-year-old Laurin as she...
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Sennentuntschi
This week the FolknHell trio trek into the Swiss Alps with Sennentuntschi (2010), Michael Steiner’s strange and unsettling take on an Alpine legend. The story begins with three isolated goatherds who, in a drunken haze of absinthe, fashion a woman out of broomsticks, rags, and paint. To their...
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The Company Of Wolves
Neil Jordan and Angela Carter turn Little Red Riding Hood into a nested dream of wolves, warning stories and growing up. FolknHell gets into the artificial forest, the gloriously different transformation scenes and the awkward question of whether a fairy tale this strange is horror, folk horror…
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Tumbbad (2018)
Tumbbad turns an ancient god, a permanently rain-soaked village and a hidden hoard of gold into one extremely bad inheritance. FolknHell heads to India for a beautifully grubby tale of greed, family and what happens when somebody works out how to exploit the monster. For our first trip into…
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Moloch
In this chilling episode of FolknHell, Andy, Dave, and David descend into the Dutch peatlands for a tense dissection of Moloch (2022), the atmospheric folk horror by Nico van den Brink. Set on the misty edge of a bog, Moloch follows Beatrix and her family as ancient bodies are unearthed around...
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KoKo-Di Koko-Da
Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-di Koko-da traps a grieving couple in the woods with three carnivalesque tormentors and one increasingly horrible repetition. FolknHell asks whether a film with a private mythology, a recurring rhyme and a psychological landscape can still count as folk horror. This time...
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Intro to the FolknHell Podcast
Three film-obsessed friends watch deep-cut folk-horror, ask “is it really folk-horror and is it any good?”, then argue, spoil and score it out of 30. Come for the obscure movies, stay for the pub-banter exorcisms. Subscribe… if you dare. For more visit the FolknHell website Folknhell is the folk...
About this show
FolknHell is the camp-fire you shouldn’t have wandered up to: a loud, spoiler-packed podcast where three unapologetic cine-goblins – host Andy Davidson and his horror-hungry pals David Hall & Dave Houghton, decide two things about every movie they watch: 1, is it folk-horror, and 2, is it worth your precious, blood-pumping time.
Armed with nothing but “three mates, a microphone, and an unholy amount of spoilers” Intro-transcript the trio torch-walk through obscure European oddities, cult favourites and fresh nightmares you’ve never heard of, unpacking the myths, the monsters and the madness along the way.
Their rule-of-three definition keeps every discussion razor-sharp: the threat must menace an isolated community, sprout from the land itself, and echo older, folkloric times.
Each episode opens with a brisk plot rundown and spoiler warning, then erupts into forensic myth-picking, sound-design geekery and good-natured bickering before the lads slap down
Hosted by
Andrew Davidson, Dave Houghton, David Hall