1984 • United Kingdom
A girl sleeps, a forest grows out of her bedroom, and every bedtime warning seems to have teeth. In this episode of Folk ’n’ Hell, Andy Davidson, Dave Houghton and David Hall return to Neil Jordan and Angela Carter’s The Company of Wolves (1984), a film remembered by at least one host as the sort of adolescent viewing experience that lodges somewhere behind the eyes and waits there patiently.
What they find is not quite the film memory promised. It is stranger, more artificial, more openly theatrical, and possibly better for it. Andy initially feels the limits of the production, noting its studio-bound quality and its faint whiff of television movie, but the discussion soon turns that limitation into one of the film’s most persuasive spells. Dave argues for the beauty of the design, the Hammer-like artificiality, the lush colour and shadow, and the way the dream world breaks the house into the forest, then lets the forest invade the house in return. David Hall, meanwhile, is still slightly wrestling with the film that unnerved his younger self, even if grown-up David is less traumatised and more intrigued.
The big question is whether The Company of Wolves is folk horror, or whether it is a fairy tale dream wearing a wolf pelt and looking suspiciously pleased with itself. The hosts circle around Rosaleen’s dream, the nested stories, the grandmother’s warnings, men who are wolves, wolves who are metaphors, and paths that may or may not be there at all. This is not a conventional horror film, and the transformations do not always work through suspense. But the film is steeped in folklore, old warnings, sexual fear, village boundaries and the dangerous education of the woods.
As Andy puts it, The Company of Wolves has folk horror “through its genes from beginning to end”. The result is a generous, thoughtful and occasionally baffled conversation about Red Riding Hood, awakening, artificial forests, freakish Kinder surprises, Angela Lansbury looking wonderfully sinister, and whether a film can be folk horror even when the horror arrives late, sideways, or dressed as a story your grandmother really should have softened a bit. “The forest itself is broken up… littered with elements from the house and the bedroom.” FolknHell host, Dave Houghton
The Company of Wolves begins with a modern girl, Rosaleen, asleep in her bedroom while her family moves through the house around her. From there, the film slips into her dream, where she becomes part of a fairy tale village surrounded by a dangerous, symbolic forest. Her sister is lost to wolves, her grandmother fills her head with warnings about men who are “hairy on the inside”, and stories fold into other stories like something told too close to the fire.
Rosaleen’s journey becomes a strange coming-of-age tale shaped by fear, desire, family warnings and old folklore. There are wolves, transformations, huntsmen, suitors, a grandmother with serious boundary issues, and a path through the woods that may be less about geography than obedience.
The hosts do not treat this as a simple yes. Dave Houghton is the most cautious at first, wondering whether a film set so firmly in dreams and fairy stories counts as folk horror at all. Is the threat real? Are the wolves a danger, a metaphor, or both? He also questions whether it works as horror in the usual sense, since the film is less interested in building tension than in letting symbolic transformations erupt from its stories.
David Hall leans into the idea that the film is chiefly about sexual awakening. The wolves are predators, yes, but they are also adult danger, social warning, desire, fear, and everything Rosaleen has been told not to understand too quickly. The village represents order, the forest represents what lies outside it, and the path becomes a suspiciously well-signposted metaphor.
Andy makes the strongest case for inclusion. For him, the film is rooted in folkloric memory, Red Riding Hood, old tales, rural fear and communal warning. Its horror may not behave like conventional horror, but that almost strengthens the case. European folk horror, he argues, often puts the folk first and lets the horror arrive if and when it chooses.
“It’s a very metaphorical path, isn’t it?” FolknHell host, Dave Houghton
- The forest inside the bedroom The hosts are fascinated by how the film’s dream world mixes domestic objects with fairy tale landscape. The woods are artificial, yes, but that artificiality becomes part of the spell.
- Wolves, men and growing up The episode repeatedly returns to the film’s use of wolves as both threat and metaphor. Rosaleen is confronting not just monsters, but adult desire, male danger and the rules imposed around her.
- Grandmother knows worst, or possibly best Angela Lansbury’s grandmother is loving, sinister and determined to keep Rosaleen afraid. Her stories are warnings, but they are also a cage made out of folklore.
- The path, the compass and other bad ideas Staying on the path sounds sensible until the film starts asking who made the path, who benefits from it, and why the handsome stranger does not seem to need one.
- Beautiful, dated, and oddly durable The production is unmistakably of its time, from the music to the studio forest, but the hosts find that much of this works in the film’s favour. It feels artificial because dreams and fairy tales are artificial.
- Not quite a werewolf film The transformations are memorable, sometimes grisly, sometimes oddly graceful, but the hosts agree the film is not really about werewolf lore. The wolves are magical, symbolic and inconveniently hairy carriers of meaning.
The Company of Wolves earns a strong recommendation from all three hosts, though not without qualifications. David Hall gives it a solid eight, Andy also settles on an eight, and Dave Houghton goes higher with a nine, admitting he loves it but stopping short of perfection. That gives the film 25 out of 30, which is a very respectable basket of grandmother-endangering goods.
The hosts agree it is beautiful, dense and full of things to unpick. Andy finds it better than his memory expected, Dave praises the production design and dream atmosphere, and David Hall sees a film whose transformations, metaphors and sexual unease still carry weight. It may not scare adults in the way it once scared them as teenagers, but as folk horror, fairy tale and strange rural dream logic, it still has claws.
“It’s not a werewolf story.” FolknHell host, David Hall
How each host rated this film