, Kier-La Janisse’s “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched” crams an entire semester’s worth of Hauntology 101 into a numbingly comprehensive 193-minute documentary that unearths the history of cinematic folk horror in such loving, erudite, and seductive detail that you almost can’t wait for it to be over so you can start watching some of the 100+ films that are excerpted along the way.Not that such patience will necessarily be required.
Trusting that her subject matter is fertile enough to merit such a scholarly approach, and also bewitching enough to survive it, Janisse connects the dots between “The Wicker Man” and “La Llorona” in a way that allows this multi-chapter epic to function as both séance-like spectacle and streaming-era syllabus in equal measure.On the one hand, auditing the whole course in a single sitting makes it easier to recognize folk horror as a mode rather than a genre, and
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