2017 • Estonia
A starving Estonian village, a devil at the crossroads, dead relatives in the sauna and a homemade creature built from farm junk. November is not short of folk material. If anything, the problem is getting it to stop throwing folklore at you long enough to check whether you still have your soul.
In this Folk ’n’ Hell episode, Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall revisit Rainer Sarnet’s 2017 black and white Estonian wonder, based on Andrus Kivirähk’s novel. They had all seen it before, loved it before, and approached the second watch with the small but real fear that the magic might have curdled. It had not. If anything, November grew stranger, richer and funnier on the return trip.
The film’s story is, underneath the mud, bark, bats and supernatural livestock theft, a love triangle. Liina loves Hans. Hans is bewitched by the Baron’s daughter. The Baron’s daughter wanders through the story like a fairy tale princess trapped in someone else’s rural nightmare. Around them, village life carries on with spectacular disregard for normality. People make kratts from bits of machinery and sell their souls to the devil to animate them. The dead return for dinner. The plague arrives in different forms. Magic is not an interruption to daily life, it is part of the furniture, along with the animals, the muck and the terrible marital prospects.
“Definitely a fairy tale. A dark, sordid, sort of shitty fairy tale in beautiful black and white images.” FolknHell host, Dave Houghton
The hosts are united in admiring the film’s confidence, its beauty and its total refusal to behave like a conventional horror film. Dave sees it as a filthy, dreamlike fairy tale. David is struck by how the film finds beauty in moments that ought to be grotesque. Andy argues that, while it may not tick the usual folk horror boxes neatly, it might be one of the most thoroughly folkloric films they have covered.
November may not scare you in the usual sense. It is more likely to leave you dazzled, confused, amused and faintly concerned about agricultural equipment. But for the Folk ’n’ Hell hosts, this is a rare one: strange, gorgeous, macabre, funny and absolutely worth getting lost in.
November takes place in a poor Estonian village where hunger, superstition, magic and social resentment have all become part of ordinary life. Liina is in love with Hans, but Hans only has eyes for the Baron’s daughter, an unreachable figure from the decaying manor house above the village. While Liina tries to win Hans through increasingly desperate means, Hans pursues his own doomed fantasy.
Around this unhappy triangle, the village continues its peculiar routines. The peasants steal from the German Baron, build kratts from scraps and souls, meet the devil, feed their dead, fend off the plague and live in a world where the supernatural is treated with the same practicality as firewood or livestock. The result is part fairy tale, part tragic romance and part mud-spattered folklore fever dream.
The hosts do not find November easy to score against their usual folk horror criteria. It has a discrete rural community, certainly, and one shaped almost entirely by landscape, poverty and belief. It has old customs, ritual behaviour, the dead returning, bargains with the devil, plague folklore, magical transformation and kratts dragged straight from Estonian myth. What it does not have, at least not straightforwardly, is the usual creeping dread or a clear horror mechanism.
Andy argues that it may not be a textbook folk horror film, but it is unmistakably a folkloric horror film. Its horror is embedded in the conditions of life, in the bargains people make, in the poverty, in the casual closeness of magic and death.
“It’s not strictly a folk horror film, but what it is to my mind is a folkloric horror film.” FolknHell host, Andy Davidson
Dave circles the same idea through the film’s fairy tale structure, its forest and water imagery, and its strange dream logic. David is more cautious about calling it frightening, but not about its place in the conversation. For him, it belongs because folk horror must be broad enough to include the macabre, the sinister and the left field.
So the verdict is yes, with caveats. November is not a scare machine. It is left field folk horror, a dark fairy tale where folklore is not decoration but the operating system.
- Folklore as everyday life Magic is not treated as special or secret. Kratts, ghosts, potions, plague lore and devilish contracts simply exist alongside hunger, work and bad weather.
- Love as the oldest bad bargain Liina and Hans are both trapped by longing, and the film makes unrequited love feel as dangerous as any curse. Hearts are handed over with roughly the same wisdom as souls at a crossroads.
- Poverty, theft and survival The villagers live in muck and deprivation, stealing from the Baron with an almost moral certainty. The film’s comedy often comes from how practical everyone is about desperation.
- Beauty in filth The hosts repeatedly return to the film’s astonishing black and white photography. It makes mud, rags, rotting grandeur and toothless faces look like something from a dream you probably should not trust.
- The kratts These farm-implement creatures are funny, sinister, oddly touching and completely memorable. They are also a perfect example of the film’s tone: grotesque, magical and strangely matter-of-fact.
- Fairy tale without comfort November has princesses, wolves, witches, devils and impossible love, but little interest in reassurance. It is a fairy tale built from hunger, lust, death and poor rural decision-making.
The hosts are unusually united on November. All three give it nine out of ten, making it one of the highest scoring films in the Folk ’n’ Hell ledger. Andy calls it one of the best films he has seen, even more entrancing on a second watch. David is relieved that it lives up to his memory of it and finds it beautiful rather than frightening. Dave compares its rewatch value to a film that keeps giving you something new each time.
Their recommendation is clear: watch it, and ideally watch it more than once. November may be muddy, strange, subtitle-heavy and full of Estonian folklore that refuses to explain itself politely, but that is part of the pleasure. It is not conventional horror, and it is not tidy folk horror either. It is something rarer: a fully imagined folkloric world, filthy and luminous, where every joke has bones under it.
How each host rated this film