Folk Horror World Tour: 10 International Titles From The Last 100 Years – /Film

By turns academic, humorous, and disturbing, "Hxan" is something like a silent documentary that derives fiendish glee from its dramatic reenactments. It's been called an essay film, and the more intertitle-heavy parts do feel like the 1922 equivalent of a PowerPoint on witchcraft and medieval torture devices (via the "Malleus Maleficarum").

Written and directed by Benjamin Christensen, who receives literal butt kisses onscreen as the Devil, "Hxan" posited the forward-thinking idea that the persecutions of women as "witches" down through the ages arose out of fear and misunderstanding of natural phenomena like sleepwalking, kleptomania, and mass hysteria.

"Hxan" is Swedish for "The Witch," and in our interview with Robert Eggers, he revealed that this movie was one of the main influences on his own 2015 film, "The Witch." You can see it when "Hxan" delves into beliefs about witches preying on unchristened children, dancing naked in the Witches' Sabbath, and smearing their backs with flying ointment. Eggers said the film's close-ups also influenced "The Passion of Joan of Arc," which cast Joan (and by extension, other women burned at the stake) as a Christlike victim of priestly/patriarchal forces.

One scene in "Hxan" takes us into a witch's hovel, and it's as if we're visiting the prop department for the folk horror genre to come. Men carry in bundles of sticks ("The Wicker Man"), they unwrap a hand from one ("Blood on Satan's Claw"), there's a skull in the corner ("Hagazussa"), and a woman visits the witch, asking for a love potion ("The White Reindeer," "November"). We also hear of women being thrown into the water to test their guilt ("Witchfinder General").

Don't be shocked like Pixar fans when "Hxan" ends with the word "slut." It happens to mean "The End" in Swedish.

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Folk Horror World Tour: 10 International Titles From The Last 100 Years - /Film

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero