Primal Curses: Symbolic Folk Horror in Antichrist and Men
Where ancient woods conceal the rot of human souls, two films summon nature’s wrath to expose the primal horrors within.
In the realm of modern horror, few subgenres evoke dread as viscerally as folk horror, with its roots in pagan rituals, rural isolation, and symbolic forces of nature. Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) and Alex Garland’s Men (2022) stand as provocative exemplars, weaving psychological trauma with folkloric imagery to dissect misogyny, grief, and masculine toxicity. This comparison uncovers how both pictures deploy symbolic landscapes and bodily metamorphoses to craft nightmares that linger long after the credits roll.
- Both films transform bucolic settings into nightmarish arenas where nature embodies repressed human evils, drawing on folk horror archetypes like the Green Man and chaotic wilderness.
- Through graphic symbolism and ritualistic violence, they interrogate female suffering under patriarchal gazes, positioning women as both victims and agents of primal retribution.
- Visual and sonic craftsmanship elevates their folk horror into arthouse terror, influencing contemporary genre works with bold explorations of body horror and ecological allegory.
Whispers from the Wildwood: Folk Horror Foundations
The allure of folk horror lies in its fusion of the pastoral and the profane, where idyllic countrysides harbour ancient, malevolent forces. Von Trier’s Antichrist plunges a grieving couple, known only as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), into a remote cabin dubbed Eden, a name laden with biblical irony. Here, the forest pulses with life that mirrors their inner turmoil: self-mutilation coincides with hailstorms, acorns rain like accusations, and animals convene in grotesque parliaments. This setup echoes folk horror’s tradition of landscape as character, akin to the cursed moors in The Wicker Man, but von Trier infuses it with psychoanalytic depth, drawing from his own depression to blur reality and hallucination.
Garland’s Men, meanwhile, transplants Harper (Jessie Buckley) to a sprawling English estate after her husband’s suicide. The surrounding woods teem with phallic symbols—overhanging branches, phallic fungi—and the village men, all portrayed by Rory Kinnear, embody a collective masculine archetype rooted in pagan folklore. The Green Man, a foliate head from British myth, manifests literally, linking the film to folk horror’s obsession with fertility rites and cyclical violence. Garland, known for cerebral sci-fi, here pivots to overt symbolism, using the countryside not merely as backdrop but as conspirator in Harper’s ordeal.
What unites these visions is their subversion of the romantic rural idyll. In Antichrist, Eden devolves into a hellscape of grinding pestles and bleeding trees, symbolising the collapse of civilised facades. Men mirrors this with its endless summer light piercing through leaves, illuminating rather than concealing horror. Both directors invoke the genre’s ‘unholy trinity’ of isolation, skewed perspective, and summoning the old ways, yet amplify it through personal psychodramas, making the folkloric feel intimately invasive.
Nature’s Vengeful Embrace
Nature in these films transcends metaphor, becoming an active antagonist that avenges human hubris. Von Trier’s prologue, a wordless ballet of slow-motion grief set to Handel’s music, establishes loss as the catalyst; the child’s death propels She into madness, where the woods respond with sympathetic fury. A deer with a stillborn fawn bursts through undergrowth, its gaze accusing He of neglect. This motif recurs: birds pluck out eyes, foxes sermonise on pain, forging a folkloric bestiary that judges patriarchal failings.
Garland escalates this ecological reckoning. Harper’s walks unearth stone circles and maypole ribbons, relics of pre-Christian rites that foreshadow the men’s ritualistic pursuit. The estate’s garden yields apples laced with temptation, and the tunnel birth sequence erupts with amniotic fluids and writhing forms, evoking nature’s grotesque fecundity. Unlike Antichrist‘s inward spiral, Men’s nature is outwardly proliferative, men shedding skins in endless replication, a viral masculinity that the forest nurtures.
This personification draws from deep folk traditions. Von Trier references medieval woodcuts of hybrid beasts, while Garland nods to English folklore’s wild men and herb wives. Yet both critique anthropocentrism: in grief’s wake, humanity dissolves into the biomass, bodies merging with roots and loam. Such imagery posits nature not as healer, but as mirror to our savagery, a theme resonant in an era of climate anxiety.
Production notes reveal deliberate immersion. Von Trier shot in Germany’s Black Forest, embracing unpredictable weather to heighten authenticity, while Garland filmed in Gloucestershire’s ancient woodlands, integrating real flora for tactile menace. These choices ground the symbolic in the sensory, making viewers feel the earth’s complicity.
The Fractured Feminine: Symbols of Sacrifice
Central to both narratives is woman’s body as battleground, symbolised through folk horror’s sacrificial lens. In Antichrist, She embodies the film’s triptych structure—Grief, Pain, Despair—each phase marked by ritualistic self-harm. Her clitoral excision with rusty scissors, intercut with woodland carnage, fuses personal trauma with nature’s brutality, suggesting femininity as chaotic force demanding repression. Gainsbourg’s raw performance, earning her the Best Actress prize at Cannes amid controversy, conveys a woman unmoored, oscillating between victim and avenger.
Men externalises this fracture across Harper’s encounters: the boy with scraped knees evokes lost innocence, the policeman leers with institutional authority, culminating in the Green Man’s pursuit. Buckley’s Harper resists, her agency culminating in the impossible birth—a chain of vomiting, impregnated men disgorging smaller selves. This ouroboros of misogyny symbolises patriarchal self-perpetuation, with woman’s trauma as origin point, echoing fertility goddess myths twisted into horror.
Symbolically, both films deploy Christian inversions. Von Trier’s Eden mocks Genesis, with She as fallen Eve wielding a mortar like divine retribution. Garland’s maypole and naked processions parody Corpus Christi processions, recasting Christ as monstrous breeder. These motifs interrogate religious patriarchy, positing folk paganism as subversive counterforce.
Critics note gendered asymmetries: He’s rationalism crumbles in Antichrist, mirroring the men’s devolution in Men. Yet female suffering dominates, prompting debates on directorial misogyny—von Trier’s own admissions of misanthropy versus Garland’s feminist intent—enriching the films’ provocative ambiguity.
Masculine Shadows: The Monstrous Collective
Men emerge as folk horror’s true abominations, their forms warped by symbolic excess. Dafoe’s He starts as therapist-healer, devolving into persecutor, his hallucinations revealing suppressed violence. The talking fox’s “chaos reigns” mantra indicts rational masculinity, a folkloric devil whispering truths too raw for daylight.
Kinnear’s virtuoso turn in Men literalises this multiplicity: vicar, landlord, policeman—all men, all complicit. Their faces peel to reveal identical underskins, a folk horror staple of shape-shifting doubled with body horror. The Green Man, crowned in holly, channels Jack-in-the-Green folklore, fertility deity turned rapist.
This collective portrait critiques systemic maleness, nature amplifying its toxicity. In Antichrist, animals proxy male aggression; in Men, men become animalistic, crawling and gibbering. Both suggest patriarchy as primordial curse, ineradicable as woodland roots.
Trauma’s Ritual Reckoning
Grief ignites these rituals, transforming personal loss into cosmic indictment. The prologue’s accidental death in Antichrist haunts every frame, She’s guilt manifesting as woodland inquisitions. Therapy sessions devolve into torture porns, folk rites of confession.
Harper’s widowhood in Men triggers hallucinatory assaults, her husband’s noose-necked ghost merging with village threats. Flashbacks reveal manipulative suicide, framing trauma as patriarchal weapon.
Both posit confrontation as exorcism, though ambiguous: Does She triumph in fratricide? Harper in birthing the beast? Folk horror’s ambiguity prevails, cycles unbroken.
Sonic and Visual Symphonies of Dread
Sound design amplifies symbolism. Von Trier’s Handel aria contrasts operatic beauty with horror; forest cacophonies—rustling leaves, animal cries—build subliminal unease. Garland layers folk tunes with distorted echoes, heartbeat pulses underscoring menace.
Cinematography mesmerises: Anthony Dod Mantle’s digital grain in Antichrist evokes fever dreams; Benjamin Kračun’s wide lenses in Men dwarf humans amid verdure. Slow-motion mutilations and processions hypnotise, embedding symbols subconsciously.
Body Horror as Folk Alchemy
Special effects pinnacle symbolic excess. Antichrist‘s prosthetics—fox innards spilling sermons, hybrid corpses—blend practical gore with CGI subtleties, evoking medieval alchemical transmutations. Men‘s birth chain uses silicone appliances and motion capture for visceral replication, turning bodies into folk idols.
These techniques, rooted in Cronenbergian influences, elevate folk horror beyond implication, forcing confrontation with the corporeal uncanny.
Echoes in the Canopy: Legacy and Influence
Antichrist shocked Cannes, sparking von Trier’s persona non grata status, yet inspired arthouse extremes like Possession redux. Men, amid #MeToo discourse, dialogues with Hereditary, cementing folk horror’s resurgence via A24 aesthetics.
Together, they redefine the subgenre, blending symbolism with extremity for enduring unease.
In pitting Antichrist against Men, we witness folk horror’s evolution: from intimate psychosis to societal allegory, nature’s symbols ever warning of buried primal rot.
Director in the Spotlight
Lars von Trier, born Lars Trier on 30 April 1956 in Copenhagen, Denmark, stands as one of cinema’s most provocative auteurs, renowned for pushing boundaries in form and content. Raised in a liberal, atheistic household—his mother was a painter, his father a teacher—he displayed early filmmaking talent, directing his first short at age 12 using a Super 8 camera. Von Trier studied film at the University of Copenhagen and Denmark’s National Film School, graduating in 1983. Influences abound: Andrei Tarkovsky’s spiritual depth, Ingmar Bergman’s psychological intensity, and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s austere visuals shaped his dogmatic approach.
His breakthrough came with the Dogme 95 movement, co-founded with Thomas Vinterberg in 1995 to revolt against Hollywood gloss. The Kingdom (1994-1997), a hospital-set horror miniseries, blended supernatural chills with satire. Breaking the Waves (1996) won the Grand Prix at Cannes, launching the Golden Heart trilogy exploring faith and suffering. The Idiots (1998) epitomised Dogme rawness.
Post-Dogme, von Trier ventured into America trilogy: Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005) staged on soundstages critiquing capitalism; Dear Wendy (2005) examined gun culture. Antichrist (2009) marked his horror pivot, followed by Melancholia (2011), a Palme d’Or-nominated apocalypse. Nymphomaniac (2013), starring Gainsbourg, dissected sexuality in eight volumes.
Europa trilogy—Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987), Zentropa (1991)—blended noir and surrealism. Recent works include The House That Jack Built (2018), a serial killer odyssey, and
The Kingdom Exodus
(2022), reviving his cult series. Controversies trail him—Nazi remarks at Cannes 2011—but his Zentropa production company fosters Nordic talent. Von Trier battles depression and Parkinson’s, infusing films with raw vulnerability, cementing his legacy as provocateur supreme.
Key filmography: Element of Crime (1984): dystopian noir; Zentropa (1991): hypnotic train thriller; Breaking the Waves (1996): tragic romance; Dancer in the Dark (2000): musical tragedy with Björk; Dogville (2003): allegorical play; Melancholia (2011): planetary doom; Nymphomaniac (2013): erotic odyssey; The House That Jack Built (2018): philosophical gorefest.
Actor in the Spotlight
Charlotte Gainsbourg, born 21 July 1971 in London to French singer Serge Gainsbourg and British actress Jane Birkin, embodies enigmatic intensity across cinema. Raised in Paris amid bohemian glamour, she debuted at 13 in Paroles et Musique (1984). Breakthrough came with L’Effrontée (1985), earning a César nomination, followed by Kung-Fu Master! (1988), directed by her mother.
International acclaim arrived with Lars von Trier collaborations. Antichrist (2009) demanded unflinching nudity and violence, winning her Best Actress at Cannes. Reunions in Melancholia (2011) and Nymphomaniac (2013) solidified her as his muse. Earlier, The Cement Garden (1993) marked her English-language pivot.
Gainsbourg’s versatility shines in 21 Grams (2003) with Sean Penn, I’m Not There (2007) as Coco Rivington, and Melancholia. French hits include La Bûche (1999), Amélie (2001) cameo, and Persécution (2009). She directed shorts La Petite (2003) and album IRM (2009), collaborating with Beck.
Recent roles: The Goldman Case (2023), 3 Hearts (2014), Song to Song (2017) with Terrence Malick. Awards: two Césars, Cannes honours. Mother to three, she balances arthouse rigour with mainstream poise, her haunted gaze defining modern European cinema.
Key filmography: L’Effrontée (1985): coming-of-age drama; The Cement Garden (1993): incestuous family tale; 21 Grams (2003): grief mosaic; Antichrist (2009): psychosexual horror; Melancholia (2011): existential sci-fi; Nymphomaniac (2013): sexual epic; Ismael’s Ghosts (2017): surreal romance; Song to Song (2017): musical odyssey.
Craving more chilling comparisons? Dive deeper into NecroTimes’ folk horror archives and subscribe for weekly terrors!
Bibliography
Bradshaw, P. (2022) Men review – Alex Garland’s bold, creepy horror is gloriously unnerving. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/19/men-review-alex-garland-jessie-buckley (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Ebert, R. (2009) Antichrist movie review. RogerEbert.com. Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/antichrist-2009 (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Falcon, R. (2010) Antichrist: Lars von Trier’s Radical Horror. Sight & Sound, 20(3), pp. 42-45.
Garland, A. (2022) Interview: On folk horror influences in Men. BFI. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/alex-garland-men-interview (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Hiscock, G. (2009) Lars von Trier: ‘I don’t like humans’. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/6240577/Lars-von-Trier-I-dont-like-humans.html (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Jones, S. (2015) Ecocriticism and Folk Horror: Nature’s Revenge in Contemporary Cinema. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 54(2), pp. 112-130.
Von Trier, L. (2011) The Gaze of Antichrist. Zentropa Press.
White, T. (2022) Men’s Pagan Symbolism: A Garland of Green Men. Fangoria, 45, pp. 28-33.