Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/01/british-folk-horror-flowering.html
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flowering again
Brings such imagery to mind.
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“The core anxiety comes from an unsettled telepathic quality of exurban British life, where eccentricity is adored so long as privacy is abdicated, and the heightened empathy of the village lurches suddenly to the crowd’s destruction of individuals”
Looks like someone dusted off their thesaurus
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It is not the government that’s out to get you, but your neighbours. You are going to be killed, but you cannot protest, for it is the will of the people. The majority prevails.
That’s how many have described the Brexit referendum: a mostly older crowd sacrificing the futures of the young in order to revitalise an old mythos of the countryside (Little England).
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I’d originally typo’d the headline as “flowing again” and almost left it that way.
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lol, I didn’t even notice /humble brag. but that is a bit much, now that you mention it. more than a bit much.
anyhow, I watched this thing a few years ago after somebody mentioned it in a BBS thread. It’s from the same era and idiom as the “classic three” folk horror films in the link, but it’s for kids. it was surprisingly good, though. I think the YA framework made it more interesting because I was not subjecting it to an adult level of suspension of disbelief.
I clicked the youtube link just to more or less survey it, but was sucked into marathoning the whole thing.
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When The Lights Went out is a modern piece (abeit set in the 70s) that’s in the same vein. It’s a good, old-fashioned British ghost story done with love. Worth a watch.
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Just stuck me immediately as an overly verbose way to say something that should’ve been more straightforward. I can comprehend it fine but it seems like the stunt a kid pulls to up their word count for a paper 
Recommendation on the Children of the Stone seems interesting. I will have to keep an eye on it. Does Hot Fuzz count as being in the same genre?
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Someone recommended this show to me, while also admitting they couldn’t really say why I should watch it, and in fact described the whole thing as “deeply unsettling in a 70’s sort of way.”
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You can’t make a great burger without some Soylent Green.
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You could without it, but then is it really a burger worth eating?
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Lair of the White Worm did this about as well as anyone ever was going to, American Warewolf in London was similarly awesome, but left the countryside after the 1st act.
There was a seriously funky motorcycle gang, ritual sacrifice, druid stone movie from the early 70s that I remember as being awesome when I saw it on the late, late movies. Whole thing is on youtube, I kind of hate to watch it, I have doubts that it’s aged all that well, but I’ll be starting it at lunch - The Death Wheelers:
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Speaking from experience? No, might as well just skip the burger and order the orphan McNuggets.
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Brings to mind the quaint Summerisle villagers singing a happy “Sumer Is a Cumin In” while the mainlander burns in the Wicker Man. Unforgettable scene.
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oh, yeah. that’s a huge part of the draw. even the look of it, the cheap-ish film stock that seems to turn everything a yellow/brown tint. something very gut-level about the whole thing.
@Grey_Devil I was thinking about Hot Fuzz after I posted that, too!
@jonathanpeterso wow. I saw that (billed as Psychomania) on the great Detroit UHF station TV50 back when i was about six. that music and credit sequence of weaving and jumping the bikes thru the stonehenge-esque set really captured me, but my six-year-old-interest flagged after that and I probably went outside or something. I’ll be re-visiting this sometime tonight–thanks!
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I wouldn’t feel at all horrified to be part of the event pictured.
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“The pagan rite we are witnessing is the film itself.”
Yeah, that’s what I love about The Wicker Man. Ewar Woowar is framed as the hero, but throughout the movie we’re thinking what a dweeb he is and how the islanders seem so much cooler, and then at the end the shocking reveal is… the wicker man, which is the poster image and title of the movie. So the whole thing is an exercise in demonstrating which side you, the audience, are really on.
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Your mention of Hot Fuzz serves to re-enforce my impulse to suggest The League of Gentlemen.
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