Folktales review – taking on tyranny of social media as teens learn to live like hunter-gatherers

In this documentary, high schoolers camp out in subzero temperatures, making their own fires and driving sledges in the wild The Pasvik Folk high school in remote northern Norway teaches teenagers to grow as young adults and escape the pressures of toxic social media by challenging them to get back in touch with their “stone age brain” and live like hunter-gatherers in the snowy wild. This is the subject of a documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Over winter months of almost continuous darkness, the teens cleanse themselves with tasks such as camping out in subzero weather, making their own fires and driving sledges with huskies. Prior to all this of course is presumably a solemn promise to do without their phones, tablets and laptops, although there are no scenes of the kids actually having to surrender these gadgets (this isn’t rehab, after all). They have to swim in icy water; and they make it look like fun. What doesn’t look like fun is the camping out and there is one t...

The Banished review – cultish terrors lurk in the Australian outback

The folk-horror wave opens an Aussie branch in this shrewdly splintered tale of a city girl returning to her roots where chthonic menace awaits

Weirdos in animal masks, summary executions, rituals that envelop you in a strange sense of predestination; thanks to the folk-horror crowd, you can’t go for a country walk these days without expecting to stumble into some uncanny pagan savagery. This Australian thriller subscribes unquestioningly to all of the above tropes, but its delicately splintered narrative and feel for outback disorientation and dismay mark out a distinctive trail – until it disintegrates to the point the film can only turn in circles.

Prodigal city girl Grace (Meg Eloise-Clarke) comes back to her home town in the bush to search for her missing brother David (Gautier de Fontaine), who saved her from their abusive father. Nosing around this depressing outpost, she hears rumours of a mysterious commune out in the wilderness drawing in local vagrants and drifters. Her uncle (Tony Hughes) warns her off investigating – but of course she ignores him, as well as the pile of keepsakes hinting at her family’s long involvement in cultist shenanigans. So she slings a few grand to her shady former geography teacher Mr Green (Leighton Cardno) to escort her out into the scrub.

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