Wake Wood is a part British/part Irish production. It's British part is due to none other than the then-recently revitalised Hammer Studios. Yes, Hammer, the infamous studio that dripped blood, etc - ok, if you really don't know much about them, then I'll just say that they were responsible for the rebirth of the classic movie monsters in the mid-to-late 20th century; they took over the care of Dracula, Frankenstein et al after their Universal Studios days. Hammer were a hugely important and influential studio who re-popularised horror, giving it a lurid, big-budget feel that competed with anything Hollywood was doing at the time.
Circa 2011 though, Hammer was in a new iteration and was just getting off the ground with a small number of low-budget horror movies that, at first glance, don't seem to owe a ton of their DNA to their over-the-top ancestors. Wake Wood was one of the first, made in conjunction with the Irish Fantastic Films and also the Swedish Solid Productions. Its director is David Keating, and it stars Timothy Spall (who I remember as the sleazy roadie in Rock Star), Eva Birthistle, a young and amazing Ella Connolly, and Aidan Gillen (who I am super pumped to see in the upcoming History channel UFO mythology sure-to-be shlockfest Blue Book). The production was mostly filmed in Donegal, with some parts filmed in Sweden.
A couple lose their little girl when she is mauled by a German shepherd. Crippled by grief, they leave their home and move to the town of Wake Wood, somewhere in Ireland. There, they slowly discover that the townsfolk are mixed up in a somewhat pagan-seeming ritual. As it turns out, this ritual may hold the key to reuniting them, in a fashion, with their lost girl, though as usual in situations like this, it just might come at a terrible cost.
Ok, so first thing to get out of the way: the general plot reminds me massively of Stephen King's Pet Semetary. The basic storyline setup is very similar. But this storyline is older than that: it goes all the way back to Edwardian Times (at least), with W. W. Jacobs' story The Monkey's Paw. The grieving parents, the dead offspring, the compromised opportunity to bring the beloved back: it's all there in this 1902 tale. If you've never read The Monkey's Paw and only know it from its Simpsons spoof, then go find it online right now and read it. It's a classic. Basically, yes Wake Wood is playing on a previously-used horror trope, but it's a classic one, and one that has a very respectable pedigree.
Secondly, Wake Wood is folk horror, and wow am I delighted to see Ireland getting in on the act with this sub-genre. For the uninitiated, folk horror is basically a type of horror that is preoccupied with natural or agricultural landscapes, ancient traditions or religions, and our relationship to the land itself. The genre is generally said to be typified by three classic British horror films - Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man, and The Blood On Satan's Claw (godawful title, great movie) - and it must be said that it's generally seen to be a bit of a mostly-British phenomenon (Kill List would be a more recent addition), though The Blair Witch Project and Children Of The Corn could be seen as American variants on the genre.
So where are the Irish entries? Well, check out my podcast episode on the short Irish horror film Foxglove for the skinny on that. Certainly, as an ecologist myself, I feel that here in Ireland we're somewhat disconnected from nature. It's true that we're mostly an agrarian nation, but we have the lowest forest cover in all of Europe, and though we do have a strong folkloric tradition that peoples our denuded landscape with all manner of imps and sprites, the notion of actually getting lost in any kind of wilderness here is somewhat more than a filmmaker can conjure up and pass the suspension-of-disbelief test.
So Wake Wood, dealing with a primarily rural landscape and some well-realised, ancient-seeming cult activities, does fit nicely into the folk horror category. As in Foxglove, landscape in Wake Wood is an incredibly important theme, with characters becoming literally and figuratively tied to the land by participation in the mysterious rites. This ties into the very Irish preoccupation with ownership of land (we've had it taken off us so many times in the past) and the very Irish notion of 'blow-ins' - people who are still considered 'outsiders' despite living somewhere for a long time. And as in Foxglove, there's a preoccupation with wind turbines (of all things) as boundary markers. This fits into various currents that run through all folk horror, especially the 70s Nigel Kneale-influenced stuff that deals with the effect of modern technology on ancient powers inherent in the landscape. There are hints of psychogeography here for sure.
Speaking of belonging, I'm going to talk about Timothy Spalding's presence here, playing himself as (of course) an Englishman. Now, on the one hand, Spalding is here because he's a great actor and he delivers a perfect performance. He's a tweed-wearing, respectable gentleman farmer, and he's perfect for the role of an older character who knows exactly what dark secrets are going on in this little town. BUT, his character being played by an Englishman in this context (something which is never addressed directly in the film) is, to me, definitely of note in a film made by Irish folks that so overwhelmingly concerns itself with the theme of belonging to a particular place. See, making your character English in this setting can come with connotations. It can be a loaded decision. Think about John B Keane's The Field, in which an English-living 'outsider' arrives to take possession of the titular land, and the film version, in which the outsider is American, removing the subtext from the story. Just a thought, and perhaps not one that anyone involved in Wake Wood intended beyond getting a great actor on board.
The film's connections to folklore are not laboured, but they are definitely there. For merely by moving a story in the mould of Pet Semetary from American to Ireland means that we are invoking the concept of a changling. It's common in Irish lore to fear that if one irks the little people, they may steal your child and replace it with one of their own. This cuckoo child (shades of John Wyndham) may at first look like your own, but clever trickery can fool the creature into revealing itself to be an unnatural abomination with the power of adult speech and the face of a wizened old person. None of this happens in Wake Wood of course, but the concept of a child who is not what she seems is doubtlessly mined from this folkloric vein.
Wake Wood is a welcome entry into the annals of Irish folk horror. Its folk horror elements are a natural part of the setting and they story; they're understated, not laboured, and feel like the natural part of an ancient belief system. The film is taut and tight, it doesn't pad itself with complex breakdowns of how the pagan or ritual elements operate, instead only presenting what is necessary to fuel a tale of heartbreak and people pushed to extremes by love and loss.
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