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 investigator heads south chasing a missing man and instead finds blood, ritual and a debt that can never be settled. The film leans hard into film noir with deep shadows, jazz soaked streets and a lead performance that carries the whole thing like a well worn coat.

Mickey Rourke is magnetic as Harold Angel, moving through the story with a bruised naivety that both works and frustrates. Robert De Niro plays it cool and controlled, all immaculate fingernails and quiet menace, while the New Orleans setting brings voodoo iconography, Catholic dread and a sense of ritual that flirts with folk horror rather than fully embracing it.

The conversation circles around atmosphere first. The hosts praise the cinematography, especially moments that feel almost monochrome until colour sneaks back in, and the way the film sustains mood for over an hour. Where it stumbles is in the final stretch. Revelations arrive thick and fast, sinister ideas are rushed through, and some motifs feel like they were meant to land harder than they do.

That leads to the big question. Is Angel Heart folk horror. The film has old beliefs, ritual, black magic and a community that quietly resists the outsider. But it also flips the formula. The detective is the danger, not the villagers. For some that inversion makes it an intriguing edge case. For others the voodoo and community elements feel more like set dressing than driving forces.

What everyone agrees on is that it is a fascinating watch. A Faustian story wrapped in noir clothing, elevated by performance and style, and let down slightly by missed opportunities for deeper dread. Not pure folk horror, but close enough to argue about over another drink.

FolknHell final score: 20 out of 30

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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 leaking folk horror out of its pores”. There is no slow burn here. It is folk horror turned up to eleven before anyone has had time to ask what day it is.

The setup is classic. A newly arrived vicar and her family move to a remote English village just in time for the annual harvest festival. Bells ring, Morris men bash sticks, bonfires crackle, and the whole thing feels like a village fete that has quietly joined a cult. When the vicar’s daughter is chosen as the Harvest Angel and then disappears mid celebration, the film should snap into panic mode. Instead, the reaction is oddly muted. As we put it at the time, “this is concern, not dread”, and that lack of urgency hangs over the rest of the film like damp bunting.

A lot of our frustration comes from how early everything is signposted. We know something is wrong almost immediately, and the film never really pretends otherwise. Unlike The Wicker Man, where discoveries unfold alongside the central character, here we are always ahead of the game. The villagers feel practised rather than secretive, the rituals rehearsed rather than inherited. The moment we kept coming back to was the Lord of Misrule silencing the crowd with a single strike of his staff. It looks impressive, but it also prompted the very FolknHell reaction of, “this feels less like tradition and more like a very well run rehearsal”.

There are strong elements scattered throughout. The children are genuinely unsettling, the imagery often striking, and Ralph Ineson brings real weight and authority to his role. He hints at grief, belief, and something deeply personal beneath the mask. Unfortunately, the script rarely gives him or anyone else the space to explore why they believe in this ritual beyond the fact that the plot demands it. Several characters feel underwritten, especially the husband, who mostly exists to look baffled until things are already on fire. Exposition replaces investigation, and key revelations are explained rather than uncovered.

By the final act, Lord of Misrule commits fully to its folk horror identity. Old gods, sacrifice, and shifting power structures all come into play. It absolutely counts as folk horror, but it is folk horror by the book, with most of the answers written in bold on page one. As we summed it up round the table, “everything’s here, apart from the drama”.

The FolknHell score lands at 16 out of 30, which feels about right. This is a watchable, decent effort with strong atmosphere and some memorable moments, but it lacks the restraint and mystery needed to truly get under the skin. Worth a look, unlikely to haunt you, and a reminder that sometimes a harvest festival is far creepier when it looks normal first.

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Witchfinder General finally gets its turn under the FolknHell microscope and immediately starts causing problems. It turns up with a big reputation a lot of baggage and the confidence of a film that has been told for decades that it belongs in the folk horror big leagues. The trouble is once you actually sit down and watch it that claim starts wobbling almost immediately.

The set up is simple and relentlessly grim. Matthew Hopkins a self appointed witchfinder rides from village to village across East Anglia turning petty grudges fear and sexual repression into a very profitable little business. People accuse their neighbours not because they genuinely believe in witchcraft but because it is useful. Hopkins is not uncovering ancient evils or dark rituals. He is just a horrible man spotting an opportunity and taking it.

This is where the argument really kicks off around the table. There is no sense of shared belief. No community bound together by folklore. No land that feels cursed or alive or pushing back. Compared with The Wicker Man or Blood on Satan’s Claw where belief itself becomes the monster Witchfinder General feels hollow. The countryside looks lovely but does absolutely nothing except provide somewhere for people to be tortured.

That does not mean it is toothless. Far from it. This is a late 1960s British exploitation film and it is not shy about it. The violence is blunt nasty and often mean spirited. There are hangings burnings stabbings and a lot of deeply uncomfortable sexual menace. Watching it now feels less like being scared and more like being slowly worn down which depending on your mood may or may not be your idea of a good evening.

Vincent Price is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. His accent belongs exclusively to Vincent Price and nobody else but his presence is undeniable. One of us was all in calling this one of his best performances. The other two were less convinced but still admitted that without him the whole thing would collapse in a heap of mud wigs and bad decisions.

At one point the film gets described as a 15th century John Wick which is both surprisingly accurate and probably kinder than it deserves. Strip away the period trappings and what you have is a revenge story about abuse of power with no interest at all in the supernatural. Which brings us neatly back to the big question. Why does this keep getting called folk horror.

By the time the scores were handed out the damage was done. A combined 12 out of 30 says it all. One FolknHeller respected the rawness and Price’s performance. The other two mostly wanted it to be over and were still baffled by its genre credentials.

Witchfinder General is important. It is influential. It is also a slog and about as folk horror as a bloke in a big hat being awful to everyone he meets. Worth watching once for context and conversation. Just do not expect ancient gods cursed fields or anything lurking in the hedgerows apart from another reason to argue.

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