folk horror

get away

Horror often relies on putting characters in unfamiliar places. They might be somewhere remote and isolated, where help cannot be found. Or maybe they are in a different culture where they do not understand the language or customs. Putting our protagonists somewhere they do not feel safe gives us an immediate sense of dread.

Get Away falls in the tradition of films like The Wicker Man (1973) or Midsommar (2019) where are protagonists are both isolated from the outside world and surrounded by a strange and unfamiliar culture. It then plays with those conventions, subverting them in interesting and fun ways.

Richard (Nick Frost, who also wrote the script) and Susan (Aisling Bea), along with their two children, Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres), are taking a holiday on a tiny island off the coast of Sweden. They are looking forward to the island’s annual celebration of Karantan (where islanders nearly starved to death, resorting to cannibalism due to some forced quarantining).

Before they even arrive at the island, they are given the side-eye by the locals who warn them they won’t be welcomed there. They barely make the last ferry (which naturally won’t return for several days) and arrive on the island where they are greeted by scorn.

The one friendly face, Mats (Eero Milonoff), is the one who rented them the Airbnb, and he turns out to be a pervert, spying on Jessie and stealing her undergarments.

For the first hour, the film relies on the tropes of these sorts of films – miscommunications over cultural differences, an increasing sense of unease – and then it takes a big twist. I won’t spoil it, but unless you really aren’t paying attention, you’ll probably figure it out long before the film wants you to. It is a bit strange that it takes the film so long to get to that twist, because what comes after is where everybody seems to be having the most fun.

At that point, the unease turns into a straight-up gore fest with loads of well-done practical effects and very fun kills.

It is a film that isn’t nearly as clever as it needs to be, or funny, but it isn’t a bad cinematic experience. I like Nick Frost quite a lot, and it’s fun to see him just being weird and having a good time. I just wish I enjoyed myself as much as he seems to have.

The Wicker Man

A very conservative and deeply Christian police Sergeant receives a letter stating that a young girl has gone missing from a small, remote island off the coast of Scotland. He travels there by himself and discovers a strange pagan community where the children are taught about the phallic symbolization of the May Pole, where teenagers dance naked around a fire, and adults openly fornicate in a park in the evening.

The Sergeant, Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) is utterly shocked by all of this, but he’s a dutiful police officer and stays until he gets to the bottom of things. Not only are the villagers engaged in a litany of sins, but they are utterly unhelpful to his investigation. At first, they claim they have never seen the girl in their lives, but then it changes to how she was on the island but died tragically, and then…well it is best not to spoil things.

The Wicker Man has become a cult favorite and one of the premier films in the subgenre known as Folk Horror. It is also a truly strange little film. It is almost a musical as the villagers often break into goofy little folk songs and dance about (often naked). There is a very real sense of dread flooding the film. The camera is often tilted at odd angles making everything just slightly off. The villagers are ever so strange and are led by Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee is one of his most interesting performances) who seems to take glee in making the Police Sergeant feel out of sorts.

There is a scene in which a woman puts a frog inside a child’s mouth to help her with a sore throat. A shop owner has a bottle full of foreskins. Britt Ekland plays the pretty daughter of the pub proprietor and at one point she sings a silly song whilst dancing in her room stark naked as an attempt to seduce the Sergeant. She beats wildly on his wall while he, soaked in sweat attempts to resist.

It is all a bit off-putting at first, but if you can roll with what it’s doing it is a rollicking good time. Not at all scary in the traditional sense, but it creates a wonderful sort of mood.