Directed by Wen-Ming “Joe” Hsieh, the look of this film feels like a strange sketchbook come to life. A businessman is stuck in a small town after the last ferry has left, so he walks to a hotel. There are no vacancies, but the manager feels badly and allows him to sleep in a storage closet that has a bed. He’s warned not to disturb the person in the next room.

That person is the manager’s daughter, who overnight falls in love with the man, who simply wants to make love and go back to his wife. When I was younger, I used to read Penthouse Forum and wonder how these things happened to the writers of the letters, which I know today are untrue. That’s because they’re all written without the actual reality of emotions. People can fall in love instantly and often, those people will seek supernatural revenge on you, so the moments are carnal bliss that you quickly pumped away will end up with you dead on the bottom of a river. Or at least coming close, but then as you may know — I hope only from folk horror films — that someone isn’t going to give up on getting their revenge just because you got away once.

This was amazing.

The Present is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

Directed, written by and starring Dayan D. Oualid, this short explores Dan (Oualid), who studies scripture all day, but has been asked by Sarah (Sophie Arama) to help her husband Eli (Michael Charny), who seems not himself. He’s possessed, but what follows isn’t what we’ve come to expect from Western films. He gathers a minyan, a quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations which in this case is casting out a demon.

They get ready like Rambo, but their weapons are verses on their arms, prayer wraps and a small horn. The ritual they go through seems exhausting, much more than any modern exorcism movie with all the crazy ghost traps and night vision. This doesn’t need herky jerky demons and strobing effects to be powerful and terrifying.

The end of the film, as Dan stands surrounded by the boxes that hold these demons and just lets out a scream as he’s made it through again, is so powerful and emotional, as is the ideal music that forms the score. I wish that there was more of this.

Dibbuk is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

Directed by Dennison Ramalho, who wrote Embodiment of Evil, this is the tale of Filho (Everaldo Pontes), a man caught between his love for his pious mother and his overwhelming lust for Formosa (Débora Muniz), who has given her soul to Satan and wants him to join her as she leaves behind their small town. If only his mother would let him date. Or die. Probably just die, if Formosa has her wish.

She ends up lying with another man while another watches, so Filho busts in with a machete. Instead of killing her, she goes full possessed and demands the heart of his mother. As you can see from Ramalho having worked with Coffin Joe, he knows how to get to the filthy bloody beating balls and heart of Brazilian horror. Nudity, demons, gore, all shot on film, all making me wish that this was longer than it is. Now I have to hunt down more of his films. This was totally up my alley and I want Severin to just release whatever else this man has made.

Love from Mother Only is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

These three films appear along with November on the All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 set.

Boundary (2009): Set among an isolated community in a remote landscape near the Russian border, Boundary offers the sound of wind, images of spaces and a general feeling of a chill. According to its mission statement, it “evokes a space of ambiguity, a psychogeography, an absence of personal histories. It is the first installment in a tetralogy of films based on a statement by Sadeq Hedavat: “In life it is possible to become angelic, human, or animal. I have become none of these things.””

Perhaps this would be good to watch before November when viewing this set instead of an extra. Consider programming these films yourself to get in the mood for the coldness and wide open regions that you will soon be watching.

Journey Through Setomaa (1913): Estonia’s first ethnographic film, this was made by Johannes Pääsuke n his expedition to Setomaa, a South-Eastern region in Estonia. You get to see how the town celebrates its customs, as well as farming, but perhaps the most interesting thing is that the subjects are fixated on the new technology that is capturing them.

I’m always wondering what it was like when these cultures were exposed to what today is the smallest bit of technology in the phones that we all carry. Here I am, over a hundred years later, watching these people who are all gone and they look vibrant and alive, like the twinkling of stars that we see after their light has reached us long after they have been extinguished.

Midvinterblot (1946): Directed and written by Gösta Werner, this presents a Norse blood sacrifice meant to end the darkness and cold of winter and usher in the return of the sun and warmth. Also, the man under the hood is Gunnar Björnstrand, who would go to be one of Ingmar Bergman’s collaborators from 1941 to 1968, then made Fanny and Alexander with him before he died.

This is mainly a series of images — the man abut to die, the ones killing him, those that watch — all illuminated by the flames as they carry out this ritual. It looks absolutely gorgeous in its two tone simplicity and I’m shocked more metal bands haven’t just started using this behind their songs. Sweden is the home of so much wonderful metal, after all — At the Gates, Ghost, Bathory, Candlemass, Craft, Watain…

The sun is going to come out tomorrow. Of course, someone is going to have to get stabbed for that to happen. But there will be sun.

These short films are part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

These two short films appear with Born of Fire on Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set.

Towers of Silence (1975): Directed and written by Jamil Dehlavi, this is the life of a Pakistani boy’s and how his obsession with death starts after he watches the Zoroastrian rituals of purification and regeneration. It’s a black and white semi-autobiographical movie about the gulf between faiths and how someone attempts to become a man caught between them.

The tower of silence is a circular, raised structure that is used to expose human corpses to the elements and help them decompose without contaminating the soil. As the bodies are left to the elements, vultures consume them, then what is left is gathered into a pit where further weathering and continued breakdown happens.

This allows the nasu, or unclean, dead bodies to be kept from contact with earth, water or fire, all three of which are considered sacred in the Zoroastrian religion.

I loved getting to see this, as Born of Fire was such an incredible piece of film. Seeing where its creator came from made me even more fascinated by it.

Qâf (1985): Another short by Jamil Dehlavi, this is totally what I’m looking for, a wordless exploration of a volcano exploding set to the music of Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream. I mean, can it be more perfect? Just images of explosions and lava flowing down, shot while he was making Born of Fire. As strange and multilayered as that movie is, this is so simple. So mesmerizing. This may end up being something that I play when I need to write and just lose myself in music and motion. For something that I wondered why it was on the Severin box set, I have to say that this has become one of my favorite parts of it.

These short films are part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

Directed by Tomás Skrdlant and written by its subject, Frantisek Hrubín, this is a remembrance of childhood from Hrubín, who started the Czech children’s magazine, Mateřídouška (The Thyme) and would go on to write 18 movies, including one of the films that this is in the same box set with, the 1978 Juraj Herz directed Beauty and the Beast.

I found it interesting that in the far off away from the world place that the writer grew up, he’d only seen a photo of a poodle in a book and it may as well have been a mythological creature unless he’d seen that evidence.  It’s also interesting to watch a man who writes for children look back on the memories of his early years and think through all the places he has come through to end up where he is today.

Frantisek Hrubín is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

Directed and written by Katrina Irawati Graham, this uses the ghost known as the Kuntil Anak to tell the story of an artist named Raesita. This supernatural entity is often a pregnant long-haired woman dressed in white that gets her revenge from men by drinking their blood and eating their organs. You can tell that one is close when you hear a baby cry and smell either a corpse or a plumeria flower. She is the ghost of women who have died in childbirth.

Man-Eater Mountain is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

These two short films appear with Edge of the Knife on Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set.

Haida Carver (1964): On Canada’s Pacific coast, director Richard Gilbert shot this short film about young Haida artist, Robert Davidson, and shows how he shapes miniature totems from argillite, a jet-like stone.

While many of the Haida people his age have given up carving for fishing, which isn’t as time consuming and pays better, very few artists were left when this was made. We get to see how Robert finds stones and how he learned from his grandfather how to do this traditional art.

Davidson’s Haida name is G̲uud San Glans, which means “Eagle of the Dawn,” and he remains a leading figure in the renaissance of Haida art and culture. He said, “If we look at the world in the form of a circle, let us look at what is on the inside of the circle as experience, culture and knowledge: Let us look at this as the past. What is outside of the circle is yet to be experienced. But in order to expand the circle we must know what is inside the circle.”

Nalujuk Night (2021): Nalujuk Night is a tradition among the Inuit of Nunatsiavut, an annual event in which “startling figures that come from the Eastern sea ice, dressed in torn and tattered clothing, animal skins and furs” walk through the town, where they reward good children and chase the bad.

Directed by Jennie Williams, this was part of the National Film Board of Canada’s Labrador Documentary Project, which seeks to foster the creation of documentary films about Inuit culture from an Inuit perspective.

Set on January 6, this holiday is celebrated by the young and old alike. In a university paper, Jannelle Barbour wrote: “Nalujuks are not real. They are like the boogey-men of other cultures. But, where this event takes place every year, everyone takes the Nalujuks to be a real thing. Most children and some adults are deathly afraid of them.”

She goes on to say, “Nalujuk’s night is truly a very exciting and scary time for all youth. The night starts off down to the community hall, where there are four or five people dressed as Nalujuks. These Nalujuks aren’t the ones that actually chase the children around town, trying to hit them. These Nalujuks are just there to show the younger children…what a Nalujuk is. After everyone leaves the hall, the real fun and games begin. Usually there are a lot of Nalajuks out running around, and there is always this one big and scary one, this one usually has the biggest weapon. It is really scary to get caught by this one. In Nain, there is always one spot where all the kids gather to stay safe. It’s usually on the steps of a person’s house. No one seems to mind though, seeing that this only happens once a year.”

I would never know of this event without Severin’s box set.

These short films are part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

These three short films appear with The White Reindeer on Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set.

A Witch’s Drum (1982): In this animated film by Kari Kekkonen and writers Outi Nyytäjä and Samuli Paulaharju, a man in a reindeer sled is taking the corpse of a shaman to where it will be barried. This takes him through a barren, snowy world illuminated only by the moon.

Narrated by Matti Ruohola, we soon discover that something has woken the shaman, who is in the same sled as the man, all alone, terrified as he had just watched the man die that evening.

Noitarumpu is a simple yet scary movie, mainly colored pencil art and the steady beat of that drum, ever playing as it takes its listener across that ice adn snow filled tundra to an uncertain fate.

The Nightside of the Sky (2024): This experimental short film reanimates The White Reindeer through contact and optical printing. It was specially commissioned from celebrated Métis filmmaker Rhayne Vernette for Severin. As ominous music plays in the background, these grainy images are recontextualized in the film, creating what seems to be nearly fine art within a set that is meant to show different notions of folk horror.

If you’re creating your own film festival with this set, this would be the perfect movie to put on before it stars, as it will get you in the mood for what you are about to see in Erik Blomberg’s movie. I found it sparse yet dreamingly gorgeous.

With the Reindeer (1947): The first movie by director Erik Blomberg, working with Eino Mäkinen, this shows what reindeer herding was like in the mid 1940s in Lapland. Called Porojen parissa, filming these scenes had to give its creator some context into what the reindeer herders and their families endured before he made his landmark movie.

What a feast to have this as part of the set. I realize that it also appeared on the Eureka release, but it’s still a great part of the overall package. Even in his first work, Blomberg was able to capture some incredible visuals and give you the chill of being in those snowy fields through the lense of his camera.

Our Selves Unknown is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

In this short, director Carter Lord sets his camera on artist Don Seiler, as he creates a 10-ton concrete sculptural commission in honor of Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz that would be placed outside the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Lord would go on to direct The Enchanted, while Seiler would paint the animals that appear on the walls throughout that movie.

What’s incredible is that for all his work and the size of this sculpture, Seiler was only being paid $3,000. The most his art had sold for was $6,000 and he had given that away.

Some may find this somewhat slow, just watching a man sculpt, but to me, seeing this part of the creation process is amazing. Lord only made one other movie, other than this and The Enchanted, Lithium Springs.

You can learn more about Seiler’s life on his official web site, which even goes into the dates in which he was married, including one marriage to the heir of Molson beer.