Moloch 2022 (Shudder Original) Excellent Folk Horror
Moloch 2022 isn’t an original idea. However, sometimes you don’t need an original idea to make an excellent movie. Hailing from the region of folk horror, Moloch has one of the most intense and beautiful scores I have heard in a while. Heady thumping bass lines hum throughout most of what happens. Set against the dark and gloomy backdrop of a Northern Netherlands peat bog, if the steady rhythmic beats don’t lure you in, the landscape and story will.
The title opens with a prologue heavily featuring a trauma from Betriek’s past. As a small girl, she was in the house while her grandmother was murdered in an upstairs room. Now in the present, Betriek lives with her mother and father. They share the same small house within the same small village. According to local gossip, her family is cursed. But due to the violent and ongoing nature of bodies that seem to fall from her family tree, it stands to reason that there might be something to the whispers in town.
Considering the strange events already, it comes as no surprise that a visitor to the town randomly turns up dead. With the body of this mysterious man, whom the townsfolk decided to call “bag man” comes a bunch of archeologists sent to investigate the scene. As they try to figure out why he is digging in such an odd place, they uncover more bodies. Slowly they begin linking all these decomposed corpses together. In an odd twist, one of the research team’s people suddenly turns up at Betriek’s house in the middle of the night and tries to kill her mother.
Folk Horror Movies 2022
Moloch provides a thorough history of the legend of Feike. The folklore is described through a yearly stage play put on by the local children and also through narration by one of the archeologists reading it aloud. At the forefront Bietriek and a lead researcher, Jonas spark up and romance which fuels what happens later into something that actually packs a punch.
Overall, the Moloch movie is cleverly constructed and brilliantly laid out. It’s in a narrative like this, steeped in cyclic tradition and creepy undertones that had me thinking of similar movies like Midsommar or The Black Hole. But despite some commonalities, Moloch stands up against other folk horror films that were much more predictable than this title was. Moloch delivers a little surprise in its ending that I really appreciated as well as explaining itself well.
- Written by Nico van den Brink and Daan Bakker.
- Directed by Nico van den Brink
- The Moloch cast has Sallie Harmsen (Blade Runner 2049) and Alexandre Willaume ( The Last Kingdom.)
- XYZ Films are Executive Producers and handle worldwide sales on the project. The title will drop on the Shudder streaming platform in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand on Thursday, July 21, 2022. The film is an official selection of the Fantasia International Film Festival 2022.
Moloch 2022 Movie Trailer
The Moloch film is rated
4 Why do people take more than they need? out of 5
