2022 • Dutch
A family house on the edge of a Dutch bog, a childhood murder heard from inside a cupboard, and the sort of archaeological dig that really ought to come with a mental health warning. In this episode of Folk ’n’ Hell, Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall take on Moloch (2022), Nico van den Brink’s muddy, nasty little folk horror puzzle about inherited violence, buried women and a curse that has no interest in letting anyone leave quietly.
The hosts are pleasantly wrong-footed by it. Moloch arrives with plenty of familiar folk horror furniture: an isolated home, a local legend, a school play doing suspiciously heavy explanatory lifting, bodies emerging from the earth, whispers in the bog, and a community that seems to have normalised some very abnormal history. But Andy notes that it also behaves like something more aggressive, almost a slasher film dressed in peat and folklore. This is not one of those slow, dreamy folk horrors where everyone spends two hours gazing at fields and feeling historically doomed. Moloch has jump scares, body horror, grim little shocks and a final turn that left the room briefly reappraising what the film had been doing all along.
There is some scepticism. The film gets a touch over-helpful in places, particularly when the legend of Feike is handed over via a children’s performance with all the subtlety of a cursed PowerPoint. Dave thinks the exposition occasionally blunts the mystery, while David revises his score down after being reminded quite how much the school play explains. Yet the hosts also agree that the ending earns back a lot of goodwill. It is brutal, clever, sad, and, in proper folk horror fashion, less an ending than a horrible full stop followed by the suggestion that the next sentence has already begun.
The big question, naturally, is whether Moloch is actually folk horror. On the Folk ’n’ Hell criteria, it scores heavily: a threat rooted in place, the past pushing through the present, a family and community caught in a ritual logic they cannot simply reason their way out of. A bog is rarely just a bog in these things. Here, it is memory, graveyard, witness and accomplice.
Beatriek lives with her young daughter and parents in a remote house by a bog in the Netherlands. As a child, she survived the brutal murder of her grandmother by hiding in a cupboard, hearing the horror unfold above her. Years later, strange events begin circling the family home. A disturbed local man digs compulsively in the earth, claiming he hears whispers, while archaeologists excavating the surrounding peat discover preserved female bodies.
As the dig expands and old stories resurface, Beatriek is drawn into the legend of Feike, a woman whose death, curse and connection to the god Moloch appear to have shaped generations of violence. The film mixes domestic dread, local folklore, possession, sacrifice and a nasty sense that the family line itself may be the trap.
By the hosts’ own magnificently self-certified criteria, Moloch is absolutely folk horror. The threat belongs to a discrete community, it is rooted in the land, and it comes crawling out of the past with mud under its nails. Dave points to the film’s strong sense of locality: the family in the woods, the school, the village festival, the bog, the dig and the legend binding them all together. Andy is especially struck by how many of the classic folk horror boxes are ticked, even while the direction leans into jump scares and body horror.
The bog matters. This is not just atmospheric dressing, although it is certainly doing a fine job on that front. The land preserves the sacrificed women, guides the digging and gives the film its sense of something old surfacing at exactly the wrong time. The bodies in the peat echo folk horror’s long obsession with buried histories that refuse to stay polite.
There is also ritual, sacrifice, inherited guilt, local legend and the horrible pressure of family continuity. The Moloch myth itself may be a curious mixture of Dutch folklore, Romanian hints and ancient Middle Eastern god business, but the hosts are willing to accept the film’s slightly pick-and-mix mythological cupboard because the effect works. It is folk horror, even if it occasionally arrives carrying a jump scare cannon.
- The bog as memory The peat preserves bodies, secrets and violence. The land is not passive scenery here, but a damp archive with very poor boundaries.
- Family as curse Moloch turns inheritance into a trap. Bloodline, motherhood and survival become tangled together until the family home feels less like shelter than a ritual mechanism.
- Exposition versus mystery The hosts enjoy the puzzle, but the film sometimes explains itself with suspicious enthusiasm. The school play, in particular, does a lot of heavy lifting while pretending to be local culture.
- Folk horror with teeth Andy notes that the film has the tropes of folk horror but the energy of something more direct and violent. It is creepy, jumpy, bloody and much less sedentary than some of the genre’s mistier cousins.
- The old world under the new Modern hospitals, archaeologists and subtitles cannot quite keep the ancient horror at bay. As Dave suggests, modernity creeps in, but the buried thing is still there waiting.
- A nasty, well-earned ending The hosts agree that the final movement gives the film its extra bite. It reframes earlier clues and leaves behind the proper folk horror feeling that this was only the latest turn of the wheel.
The hosts land on Moloch as a good, solid folk horror film, scoring it 21.5 out of 30. David starts at seven and a half, then revises down to seven after being reminded of the school play exposition. Dave sits around the same level, admiring the creepiness and the way the ending completes the story. Andy goes slightly higher with seven and a half, mainly because the final twist genuinely catches him off guard and makes the film feel carefully constructed rather than merely murky.
It is not perfect. There is too much explanatory business in places, and anyone with a delicate relationship to onscreen vomiting has been warned. But the atmosphere, setting, performances, family dynamic and cruelly satisfying ending make it worth watching. Moloch is not just wearing the folk horror costume. It has peat in its pockets and something ancient muttering in the hallway.
How each host rated this film