Nightsiren

This is a canny, emotionally impactful film that shows just how powerful folk horror can be as a tool to address urgent aspects of the present day.

Nightsiren is a bewitching film that will hopefully work its magic on countless horror audiences to come.

“Nightsiren” staunchly believes that the supposed horrors of imagined supernaturals pale in comparison to the horrors of ordinary people. That belief is what makes it such a strong film.

It’s a very handsome-looking movie that doesn’t entirely pull together, but provides a lot of intriguing elements to chew on.

It’s only a horror movie as much as the reality it portrays is horrific, but it nevertheless engages with much of the eerie, mystifying imagery that has made folk horror so alluring as a subgenre.


The far from linear approach creates a dreamlike narrative where there isn’t a single reliable memory. The tropes of the witch in the woods, the creepy cabin, missing children can be rationally explained, but no one ever rallied a mob from common sense.

This sober, sombre film is always a visual treat with a formidable atmosphere and lots of interesting layering to unpick&#59; if only, if only a few more loose ends were tied up.

What's different about Nightsiren is how the cries of "witch," the public excoriations and publicly-sanctioned mortifications, happen in the present--in the wilds of a modern Slovakia...

Nightsiren never wants viewers to be completely comfortable, frequently presenting challenging scenes and ideas. Despite that discomfort, the story within is a gripping one that feels bigger than the narrative mysteries it details.

Nvotová is well versed in the language of the horror film, and some scenes echo the early work of Neil Jordan, but go much further in their hallucinatory concatenation of the forest wild and the monstrous feminine.