Rural Denmark, 1991: a little girl, playing in a small room in her home, is terrified by what seems to be a violent attack taking place upstairs, in the room right above her head. That’s bad enough, but the attack seems to take on a surreal quality almost instantly, with blood seemingly cascading down the walls as the house itself shakes; this is one of the ways Moloch (2022) immediately sets out its stall as a film which blends reality and unreality very well. It’s a horror story about family, maturely acted and scripted, with some significant, creepy aspects which call on folk horror tropes without slavishly accommodating them.
The little girl of the opening scenes is all grown up by the time we encounter her again: Betriek (Sally Harmsen) is by now a mother herself, living at the old family home with her parents and young daughter Hanna. It’s a reasonably happy home, despite a history of trauma which has cast something of a shadow over its inhabitants, but things are about to become far more unsettled when a local eccentric, the ‘bag man’ as he’s known, dies of hypothermia outside after attempting to dig in the nearby peat bog – but not before precipitating an important archaeological discovery at the site.
A team descends to excavate it; this is a nuisance to Betriek and her family at first, as they are bothered by people from the team investigating the environs of their house – or at least, that’s what they assume is happening. Soon, Betriek befriends the manager of the excavation site, and as they get to know one another, it seems that the excavation itself may be interwoven with the events which have overtaken her family.
The film doles out its plot details very carefully, with a pace which allows the audience to spend time pondering what is going on, and how what we see fits together. It is not overwritten, and it only slowly cedes to its more recognisable folklore elements – all of which are new to this reviewer, and if this wasn’t interesting enough, it comes via links to archaeology as a plot point: some of the best, creepiest horror stories have taken a similar route. It is even more careful with its explicitly horror content, for the most part, which makes the more horror-heavy scenes land all the more – although, some of this impact is lost as the film strives to finish its story in the allotted time, with a few ‘oh wow, it must be true!’ moments which are less effective. However, it’s the plausible, affectionate – if not uncomplicated – relationships within the family at the heart of this story which really sustain the film. These are loving, if occasionally recalcitrant people, and watching what unfolds around them is imbued with significance because of how well they are drawn as characters. Supporting characters are good, too, despite there being a bit of that slight muddying which can occur when actors are trying to segue from one language to another (here, between Dutch and English).
A film which makes very few missteps and lands an impressive punch by the time all’s told, Moloch is a worthwhile, intriguing film. It all looks great, too, bringing eminently tonal Dutch landscapes together with classic horror’s creeping mists and some great interior shots, including elements of home invasion here too, to really up the ante. If there’s any danger of the resurgence in folk horror becoming a little hackneyed, then Moloch dispenses with this, by offering a careful reinvigoration of the key fear behind the genre – namely, that there is something older and wiser than ourselves in the places we inhabit.
Moloch (2022) will be released on Shudder on July 21th 2022.