Eyes of Fire

Almost suffocating slow burn of a movie that you won't even be shocked by a toddler exploding.

This feels like a more authentic A Field in England in that it basically involves LARPers and definitely feels like a bad drug trip. I very much enjoy these witch flavored folk horror films and understand that rapidity has no place in their pace, to me that makes the flashes of tree witches or mud ghosts that much more shocking. I also lost it for the red eyes in One Missed Call so I'm a tainted perspective.

The viewing experience is like watching a good TV movie slowly become a great art film. The limitations of the form only add to its better, cerebral qualities. The adulterous priest was definitely something, until a child gets shot in the back and explodes. (You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.) This works as folk horror because civilization is established as a facade long before they even trespass into sacred space.

I rather enjoyed this, as I tend to enjoy films of the "folk horror" genre. There are moments of psychedelia (almost), and some genuinely creepy scenes. I watched the theatrical version - there's a longer version that might add a bit of understanding to some of the more opaque moments, so I'm tempted to check that out. It perhaps suffers slightly due to what I expect are budgetary limitations, but this is definitely worth a look.

Honestly so much more interesting than whatever a conventionally "good" version of this movie would be.

Doesn't accomplish everything it wants to, but I admire the effort. It has a nice sort of drive-in Aguirre aesthetic.

Crounse adopts a Val Lewton-like approach, and his hallucinatory horror tale definitely has its black-magic moments -- naked ghosts come and go, living faces form on haunted trees, and blood flows from the earth. This also succeeds in conveying the tenuous nature of frontier survival. Though flawed by a sluggish pace and slack acting, this is worth a look.

Usually I applaud any attempt to do something new and different with the horror genre, but this is as dull as dust. And incoherent, to boot

David Lynch's the Witch

Really eerie and well made folk horror movie about why wandering into a place that isn't yours is a bad idea. Also a kid exploded so that was pretty weird. Viewed on Shudder.

Baffling and so horribly low budget that it was off putting

Excellent, especially if you know the myth