Enticed as I always am by the promise of 1970s British Lion-style folk horror films, I approached 2019’s Beneath the Trees with a sense of hope that I was about to experience a little wonder, a little terror, perhaps some jaunty music. Instead, I was presented with 75 minutes of pure parody. Incapable of enjoyment, I found myself making a bingo card of each trope as it came into the frame.
There’s nothing wrong with tropes on their own; indeed many of my favorite classics of Pagan cinema are made of the same constituent parts as Beneath the Trees. But as the sage Lil Wayne once said, there are two ways to make art: be good or be good at it. A film does not have to be innovative or even have anything new to say for audiences to respond. People love when the song is an old one they know, and if the player can play or the singer can sing, they’ll sing along.
This film is neither good nor good at it. I didn’t want to sing along, so here I am to heckle.
Beneath the Trees (2019) poster [Blue Magma]
Thin and boring university scarecrow Jay (Louis Levi) is dating thin and boring American girl Emily (Sarah Bradnum). They are interrupted in their attempts at coitus by the ringing of Emily’s iPhone with its original marimba tune, alternately the source and frustrating end of all tension in this film. Undeterred by the mystery of a ringing phone or the total lack of a plot, they embark on a mysterious journey into the English countryside, where Jay’s cousin Julia (Jessica Chamberlain) is waiting.
From here on out, it’s a bad Blair Witch impression; noises in the woods, half-glimpsed horrors, and a firm reliance on the idea that the moviegoing public will watch white teenagers do anything at all, as long as the idea of them eventually having sex is present on the screen.
When Jay and Emily succumb to the promptings of nature by fucking in a tent, it ushers in the second act. Jay, newly empowered by the flush of youthful coupling to walk the woods and give a dubious history lesson, explains that unless a sacrifice is made, the vaguely-described Pagans of the past would be lost to “eternal damnation,” which as we all know is a core concept of our religion. He also references the “sins of the flesh,” which are punished by the pre-Christian god with starvation.
That all checks out, am I right, Witches?
Anyhow, I have bingo! Please hold all cards. Here are the ways you can tell if you’re trapped in a folk horror film, courtesy of director Marco de Luca, who clearly has nothing better to do than pull our balls for us:
- Folks are always staring off into the distance.
- Nobody will answer a direct question unless they can be enigmatic or vaguely threatening.
- You’ve brought along an outsider who asks too many questions.
- People aren’t wearing robes when you get there, but they’re not not wearing robes, either.
- A British actor is doing an unconvincing American accent and behaving like a rude and selfish child.
- The farm isn’t doing so well, but there might be a way we can fix it.
- Our god is generic and natural, but also very scary.
- There will be blood. It’s not necessary and it holds no meaning, but there will be a close-up on it anyway.
- There is a special tree that is very old and super weird looking.
- When The Ritual begins, you will think you can escape but you cannot.
Folk horror is, like all other subgenres, made up of recognizable motifs. The failure of Beneath the Trees is not that it relies on this well-worn structure to tell its story; it fails because it uses nothing else. Animating a musty old skeleton will get our attention, but the skeleton has got to try out some new costumes or learn a new dance to hold that attention.
Not only is Beneath the Trees uninventive and unoriginal, it’s also unscary and uninteresting. The score screeches and crescendos at random moments, having nothing to do with tension or action in the frame. An off-camera voice calls out to Emily and CGI shadows reach for her, but these have the obvious quality of post-production edits trying to make something out of nothing. There is no monster in this film, which is fine. But there is also no soul, which is not.
Sarah Bradnum as Emily in Beneath the Trees (2019) [Blue Magma]
With these same ten tropes, someone else made Midsommar. In a world without iPhones and marginally more mystery, folks made Eye of the Devil using the same bag of tricks. It is my fervent and undying hope that more than a few future filmmakers will realize what a treasure trove of weirdness Pagan community and ritual really are, and resurrect the glory of this subgenre by breathing new life into it.
Beneath the Trees is breathless. It is lifeless. It is without magic, meaning, or even the thrill of the macabre. It is available on Amazon Prime, but you should go see Sinners in theaters, instead.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.