The Third Day
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Hey, you got bedroom farce in my folk horror!
You got folk horror in my bedroom farce!
Neither of them remember what happened.
But things dont stay light for long.
use the courts to revoke her privileges.
His son was murdered by a Romanian asylum seeker after he and Sam became separated at a fair.
Its the only way we can let go of him, he says of himself and his wife.
One piece at a time.
Yours is yours, theirs is theirs.
Mostly, grief is lonely.
Its a bracingly sad glimpse of what his family life must be like back home.
Then things get weird.
He discovers the camper from his dream, and as in his dream, its been burned.
He sees his son, who runs off into the tall grass.
Hooded men begin emerging, cutting off his escape, forcing him into the woods.
My child is dead because of you, Jason tells Sam, half-sobbing, half-growling.
Its coming, Jason says after a brief, brutal proclamation about the power of hate.
The darkness is coming.
And then Mr. and Mrs. Martin appear to make everything right.
The killers in hoods?
Just a bunch of stupid teenagers playing pranks.
And in his next conversation with Jess, Sam admits exactly that.
And so it seems that the days events are explained away.
(Not something Id do on a day Id flirted with death and madness, but okay.)
And as he hallucinates beautiful lights and flowers, the Martins appear.
The Martins separate Sam and Jess.
Sam hallucinates flying as he watches other people soar through the sky.
A massive wound appears in his stomach, like the animal mutilations hes witnessed.
He rubs it shut.
Then he starts looking right at us.
he says right into the camera.
Epona … is that you?
Its not Epona, nor is it us in the audience.
Its Larry and Charington (Richard Bremmer) bearing a crowbar and a burlap sack.
Roll credits, behind which revelers dance around a bonfire, upside down.
This is thrilling filmmaking, raw and weird and alive, like the rituals it chronicles.
