FILM REVIEW – CRONE WOOD

Found footage horror has something of a bad rep nowadays. There was a time after Paranormal Activity and [Rec] came out where everyone and their dog seemed to be making one, and the shine wore off quick. Despite some great gems (The Borderlands and Creep, anyone?), the sub-genre has never really recovered, though there’s still plenty of shakycam POV horrors around thanks to them being nice and cheap.

Enter writer-director Mark Sheridan with his feature debut Crone Wood. A young couple who’ve just met decide to go camping in the titular woods on a whim, but their romantic night descends into terror when they run afoul of a mysterious pagan cult that calls the wood their home.

It’s immediately apparent that this is a low budget film. Super low budget, in fact. Luckily, that fits the found footage aesthtic well; it’s easier to suspend your disbelief because it doesn’t look too slick, too Hollywood. Once we’re lost in the woods or exploring the creepy ruined lodge house, there’s a real Blair Witch Project vibe as every shadow feels like it could be hiding a lurking figure. Incidentally, the ruined house in question is The Hellfire Club in Dublin, where occult shenangigans may well have gone down in the 18th Century, so no wonder it’s off-putting! Sheridan makes the most of his surroundings and the darkness to deliver some solidly creepy sequences, which is great work considering it’s mostly shots of people wandering around. Not easy to thrill with that!

For the first half of the film it really does feel like two people messing around, getting to know each other and having a fun time with a camera. A lot of the credit for that is due to the leads, Ed Murphy (Vikings) as Danny and Elva Trill (Line of Duty) as Hailey. Their chemistry is great, and their playful banter makes you feel a bit like a third wheel on their unconventional date, a voyeur when things get racy, a witness when things go pear-shaped.

Unfortunately it’s not too long after things go pear-shaped that the film itself starts to follow suit. After a very tense sequence involving creeping around a house looking for a phone to call for help, things stop feeling quite so realistic. For one thing, when they’re chased off Danny goes back for the camera he’d dropped in a classic case of Put The Damn Camera Down. Why would you stop to pick up the camera when being chased by a very real imminent threat? Because we wouldn’t have the rest of the film otherwise, of course. Sheridan’s script tries to explain it away with ‘it’s all evidence for the police of the weird stuff going down’, but it’s just not a strong enough reason to ring true, especially considering Hailey correctly points out that it just catches them tresspassing in someone’s home.

From there they meet a family who can save them and help them get back to civilisation, and if you can’t tell what’s about to happen then I think maybe you’ve never seen a horror film before. There is a twist within the twist here that spins things in a different direction, however it’s still pretty predictable - I called it from the very second scene and I’m not usually very good at that! It’s a pretty dull sequence, sadly, and leads into a succession of pagan rituals and ‘so mote it be’s that feel… off. I don’t know the pagan roots of Ireland, but none of it felt authentic here. It felt Wicker Man-lite.

And that’s the big problem. The Wicker Man casts such a long shadow over folk horror that it’s hard to escape, and most of Crone Wood doesn’t seem to even try. Between the masks everyone wears (creepy at night, a bit sad-looking in the daylight), the procession through the woods, even the folk song (overlaid as soundtrack despite being played diagetically? Very jarring!), everything from the big twist onwards just makes you wonder why you aren’t watching The Wicker Man instead. There is one moment that stands out from the rest, that being a very uncomfortable rape disguised as a fertility ritual – ironically, that feels derivative of Midsommar, but doubly ironically this film first came out in 2016 so it actually predates Midsommar! Kudos to Sheridan for thinking of it first.

Instead of feeling chilled or thrilled, I was mostly left wondering how much of the paganism on show is authentic, and how much a pagan viewer might be annoyed or offended by it. By the end of the film, I was totally disengaged, which is such a shame as it had really gripped me for the whole first half.

Crone Wood isn’t a bad film. It’s just not a good one either, unfortunately. It doesn’t do much to surpass the limitations of found footage, or to bring a new angle to folk horror. It doesn’t tell a particularly original story, nor does it keep hold of your immersion through to the end. But it does have a strong beginning, with characters who feel real and interesting and are great fun to spend time with. It’s got passion, which is essential.

It shows that Mark Sheridan has great promise, and hopefully something more original from him is just around the corner.

Review by Sam Kurd