2023 • United Kingdom
A stone island, seven flowers and a woman in a red coat who may have been alone for a week, a lifetime or something much older than either. Enys Men (2022), Mark Jenkin’s Cornish folk horror riddle, gives Folk ’n’ Hell plenty to worry at: lichen on rocks, lichen on skin, a standing stone that feels less like scenery than a witness, and a coastline where time appears to have got itself into a knot.
Andy, Dave and David approach the film as both a puzzle and a mood piece. There is very little dialogue, very little conventional plot and a great deal of watching Mary Woodvine’s unnamed volunteer repeat the same small rituals: checking flowers, writing “no change”, dropping stones into an old mine shaft, making tea, restarting a generator and trying not to be too visibly bothered when the island starts answering back. It is not the sort of horror film that leaps out from behind a door. It is more interested in making the door, the cottage, the mine, the flowers and the sea all feel as if they have been there longer than they should.
For Andy, this one lands very close to home, quite literally. Shot in Cornwall, full of familiar landscapes and faces, Enys Men becomes personal as well as cinematic. He reads the film as a story about permanence, memory and the island’s accumulated history pressing through one woman’s life. Dave is fascinated by its grain, noise, repetitions and “as above, so below” imagery, while also admitting it demands more than one viewing. David admires the artistry and the way the film seems to interfere with itself visually, though he is more cautious about the experience of watching it. “No woman is an island.” FolknHell host, Dave Houghton Except, as the episode rather mischievously concludes, perhaps Mary Woodvine is.
The big question is not whether Enys Men is strange. It plainly is. The question is whether its strange, slow, rocky spell earns the effort. The hosts largely think it does, though not equally. This is folk horror without a maypole, without a cult and without much running about. Instead, it offers a woman, a stone, a wound, a mine, a vanished boat, and the suspicion that the land has been keeping receipts.
On a remote Cornish island, an unnamed volunteer observes a cluster of rare flowers and records their condition each day. At first, nothing changes. Then lichen appears on the flowers, and a matching growth seems to spread across the scar on her body. Around her, the island begins to fold past and present together: a young girl, miners, a priest, folk singers, a lifeboat crew and a fisherman all appear in ways that suggest memory, haunting or something older than either.
Her routine becomes ritual. She drops stones into an old mine shaft, watches the sea behave strangely, and moves through a landscape where the standing stone outside her cottage seems to carry the weight of everything that has happened there. The film is less a linear mystery than a slow accumulation of island history, grief and repetition.
The hosts are unusually united on this one: yes, Enys Men is folk horror, and possibly one of the cleaner fits for the show’s own recurring definition. Andy recalls their three tests: the threat comes from the environment, from an earlier time, and from a discrete or isolated community. Enys Men ticks all three, but in its own stony, stubborn way.
There is no simple monster here, although Dave points out that there are arguably supernatural figures moving through the film. Andy’s distinction is that these presences feel “grounded in the earth”. The horror is not an invading demon or a masked village committee with poor safeguarding policies. It is nature, memory, geology, grief and the long life of a place pressing back. “It is the very essence of nature that is the horror.” FolknHell host, Andy Davidson David agrees that it is folk horror, but he is less convinced by the horror part as an emotional experience. For him, the fear is a sliver rather than a full meal. He admires the film’s power and its land-energy, but would choose something like Tumbbad if he wanted folk horror with more bite and genuine dread. So the verdict is clear but nuanced: Enys Men belongs in the field, even if it spends more time staring at the stones than chasing you through them.
- Island as memory The island is treated less like a setting than a storage device for grief, labour, religion, childhood and disaster. Andy reads the volunteer as someone whose life is entangled with the island until its experiences become her own.
- Ritual and repetition Tea, flowers, notes, stones, generator, cottage, landscape. The repeated actions begin as routine and gradually feel like an old rite being performed for reasons nobody living can fully explain.
- Lichen, scars and slow time David is delighted, perhaps worryingly, by the film’s lichen. Its growth on flowers, rocks and the volunteer’s scar becomes a sign of stillness, age and a body becoming part of the land.
- Above and below Dave picks up on the film’s fascination with surfaces and depths: rocks above the sea, mines below the ground, and the sense that what is buried is never quite finished with the living.
- Cornwall, stone and older belief The standing stone, the Tinners Way, the mine workings and the priest all suggest layers of belief and occupation. Christianity appears almost recent beside the island’s deeper, harder presence.
- Admiration without easy comfort Everyone respects the film’s craft, but they do not pretend it is an easy night in. It is beautiful, sparse, demanding and occasionally baffling, which is either the point or an excellent excuse to make more tea.
Enys Men scores very highly, but not evenly: David gives it a “rude” six and a half, Dave gives it nine, and Andy gives it a full ten, bringing the total to 25.5 out of 30. That spread captures the episode nicely. This is a film the hosts admire, but it asks for patience, attention and a tolerance for ambiguity as thick as Cornish fog.
David finds it powerful and worthwhile, though he likes it less on a second viewing and wants more fear from his folk horror. Dave is intrigued enough to go back and digest it again. Andy, helped by personal connection as well as cinematic admiration, places it among his favourites. “It’s a film makes you work and it rewards you for doing that.” FolknHell host, Andy Davidson So yes, they recommend it, but with a warning label carved into granite: bring concentration, bring curiosity, and do not expect the island to explain itself.
How each host rated this film