I think Folk Horror is done best when you feel like you’re in a foreign land. It removes the sense of security you feel when you’re connected to the place you are and then it doesn’t take much to install dread into somewhat mundane things. Fréwaka does this very well. Even though it’s set in modern-ish day Ireland, it’s in a pretty small village and most of the dialogue in the movie is in Irish. People drive cars and have cellphones, but also hang stuff on their walls and in “fairy trees”. It’s just foreign enough that I never got the feeling that the characters were in a safe place.
The plot of the movie is somewhat straightforward, but adds a bit of a twist that ties the plot ends together pretty well. There’s a lot of HEAVY atmospheric scenes that drill you with a very uncomfortable score (I can’t imagine the movie would be half as effective with less intense audio). It melds pretty well with the mental illness aspect of the characters and their hallucinations (?) on screen. There’s also a dash of Catholic trauma thrown into the mix, which felt a little out of place when watching it, but since I’ve had time to process it makes more sense (and made for some creepy visuals, the like that Rob Zombie dreams of). I should also mention that so much of this movie rides on the performances of the two main characters, and they really do put in some great work.
I’m not sure I can give this one a 4, because there was a lot of dragging to build the tension, which is does real good, but then it just holds for too long a lot of time. It pays off with some genuinely scary moments, but by then I had already started breathing again.
3 out of 5