1989 • German
A small German village, a missing child, a dead mother in the water and a little girl who may be protected by ghosts, memory, or the film’s very particular sense of fairy-tale logic. Laurin (1989) gives Folk ’n’ Hell one of those episodes where everyone can see the atmosphere, everyone can see the craft, and nobody is quite sure the thing is actually folk horror.
Andy, Dave and David find themselves in rural Germany with a film that looks much older than it is. Made in 1989 but styled like a strange cousin of 1960s Hammer, Laurin is all saturated colours, misty light, red everywhere, crooked interiors and a murderer shot like a ghoul from a bedtime story nobody should be telling children. Andy is the most taken with that surface, admiring its fairy-tale haze and the way its grim story feels filtered through a child’s perception. Dave and David are less persuaded by the film as a viewing experience, even while admitting there is plenty going on.
“It was a bit esoteric, wasn’t it? I think esoteric is probably possibly being generous.” FolknHell host, Andy Davidson
The episode circles around the film’s slippery identity. Is Laurin a horror film, a murder mystery, a supernatural coming-of-age story, or a folk tale wearing a blood-dark frock and standing very still in the corner? Dave argues that it lacks the uncanny drift he associates with folk horror, while David is firmly unconvinced by the idea that the threat comes from the land. Andy makes the case for folk horror adjacency, pointing to the isolated village, old-world textures, death customs, folklore-like imagery and the sense of a child’s world closing in.
What emerges is a conversation about style versus substance, fairy tales with appalling subject matter, black dogs, drowned mothers, protective spirits, drunken grandmothers and the sort of schoolmaster who is less a red flag than an entire village warning system. The final score lands at 14 out of 30, with Andy higher than the others, but all three agreeing that Laurin is interesting, strange, attractive and frequently frustrating.
Laurin follows a young girl in a rural German village where children begin to disappear. After her mother dies in mysterious circumstances near a bridge, Laurin is left in a world of absent men, watchful women, odd visions and uneasy domestic spaces. She begins seeing the spirits or traces of missing children, while the returning son of the local priest, later a schoolmaster, becomes an increasingly sinister presence.
The film is not especially keen on tidy explanation. Much of it seems filtered through Laurin’s point of view, which gives the story a dreamlike, fairy-tale quality rather than the clean logic of a thriller. The horror sits in suggestion, implication and the growing sense that the village knows less than it should, or cannot say what it knows.
The hosts do not land neatly on yes. Andy puts forward the strongest case for Laurin as folk horror, or at least folk horror adjacent. It has the isolated rural community, the old-fashioned village life, the death rituals, the black dog imagery, the castle, the sense of a child moving through a world governed by half-understood adult rules and possible supernatural protection. He also argues that if certain recognised folk horror films qualify through tone and texture rather than obvious pagan business, Laurin deserves to be considered in that same murky lane.
“There’s no folk horror in it.” FolknHell host, Dave Houghton
Dave is not convinced. For him it feels more like a supernatural coming-of-age film or a gently told serial-killer story than folk horror. It has folklore-like images, but not the uncanny unmooring he wants from the genre. David agrees with the isolated-community point, but rejects the idea that the threat is in or of the land. The danger is human, specific and predatory.
So the verdict is: folk tale, yes. Folk horror, probably not. Folk horror adjacent, if you are feeling generous and have already walked too far into the woods to turn back.
- Fairy tale logic, grim subject matter Laurin’s story is dark enough that the hosts feel it almost needs the protection of fairy-tale distance. The film’s obliqueness makes the horror bearable, but also harder to follow.
- A child’s view of adult danger Much of the film seems shaped by Laurin’s perspective. That gives ordinary spaces a strange charge and turns adult behaviour into something threatening, confusing and only partly legible.
- Style as seduction and obstacle Andy is drawn to the film’s gorgeous, Hammer-like colours and misty visual world. Dave and David appreciate the craft, but find the experience more frustrating than rewarding.
- Isolation without a folk-horror engine The village setting matters, but the hosts question whether it creates a true folk horror threat. For David especially, the danger is not the land, tradition or community belief, but one damaged and dangerous man.
- Women, men and absence Dave picks up on the pattern of men leaving and returning, while women remain, witness and hold things together. That social structure gives the village a quiet unease beyond the murder plot.
- Protection, spirits and ambiguity Laurin seems surrounded by protective forces, from visions of dead children to the possible return or presence of her mother. Whether these are supernatural events, memory, grief or fairy-tale framing is left deliberately hazy.
Laurin is not a rousing recommendation from the Folk ’n’ Hell table, but it is not dismissed either. David gives it a four, finding it artistically interesting but not especially entertaining. Dave is also around a four, grateful for its short running time and wary of how frustrating it might have become at greater length. Andy goes higher with a six, largely because he loves the film’s fairy-tale style, its music, its archness and its strange misted beauty.
“It was mercifully short.” FolknHell host, Dave Houghton
That gives Laurin 14 out of 30: middling, curious, visually memorable and probably more rewarding to discuss than to watch. It may not pass cleanly as folk horror, but it does have folklore in its bones, a black dog at its heels and a very unpleasant secret under the village floorboards.
How each host rated this film