Modern Welsh Gothic Horror On Screen: Starter Pack

Modern Welsh Gothic Horror On Screen: Starter Pack

CONTENTS

Introduction

I thought I’d put together a list of some absolute bangers of Welsh cinema from the last 20 years and give a few reasons for each one. Welsh horror is about the landscape, the tensions between traditional ways of life and modernity, industrialisation versus agrarian and traditional ways of living, Anglicisation, and the struggles to reconnect with the past while shaping and reshaping a modern Wales.

Music is a huge part of Welsh culture, and so that plays a part in some of these films/limited series. I’ve picked ones that reflect lots of different themes prevalent in Welsh Gothic fiction.

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Rabbit Trap (2025) dir. Bryn Chainey, written by Bryn Chainey

• The landscape and its natural sounds as both music and magic; music as core to the film, but not in a stereotypical way, but a way that speaks to the spiritual side of our culture.
• Tylwyth Teg lore – autistic child rejection trauma, but also naming things and not naming things – using lore as analogous to trauma
• Jade Croot, a Merthyr actress, as the androgynous, nameless Child – she’s genuinely fantastic
• Desperation for connection and community leading to really upsetting situations, which feels very Valleys honestly
• Damp, decay, and rot – the Gothic triad of goodness

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Gwledd (2022) dir. Lee Haven Jones, written by Roger Williams

• Anglocentrism is a corrupting influence
• Tylwyth Teg lore wrapped in a fantasy eco-horror; the vengeance of the land and its ancient forces against those who forget you
• Gastro-horror – the meal as central to political machinations, family control and dysfunction, and turned into a site of horror and disintegration of norms, status quo, etc.
• Body horror and the corruption of flesh – insides matching outsides matching insides
• Use of silence and absence of language in a Welsh language film, which I think has many layers and uses and symbolic reasons to be done that way

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Requiem (TV Mini Series 2018) dir. Mahalia Belo, written by Kris Mrksa (creator, writer of 5 episodes) and Blake Ayshford (1 episode)

• Music as central to the plot, again, not in a stereotypical way but intrinsic and fresh
• Child abduction drama leading to loss of culture, heritage, language, community – and a blundering, destructive attempt at reclamation
• Inventive use of John Dee as a historical figure, using his connections to Wales and Anglo-Welsh identity
• Esoteric twists – not using folklore but doing something different and Dee-inspired instead
• One scene filmed behind my house

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A Dark Song (2016) dir. Liam Gavin, written by Liam Gavin

• Welsh-Irish filmmaker Liam Gavin filmed this in Dublin, Ireland, with funding from Ffilm Cymru, as the setting is meant to be in North Wales. Otherwise, this one is kind of the odd one out, but Irish and Welsh culture have a few similarities, so you get a dual flavour from this, I think.
• Angels and demons and rituals
• Tight, two-person cast, playing on the dynamics of power and manipulation and every human emotion going
• Esoteric horror that’s actually psychological horror
• This would be a good film to follow Requiem – the indie Irish counterpart. It definitely has more Irish Catholic background vibes than Welsh nonconformism.

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Gwen (2018) dir. William McGregor, written by William McGregor

• Period horror-drama – industrial capitalism vs traditional agrarian farming life
• Urban patriarchal norms destroying rural matriarchies
• Rape of the landscape ultimately culminates in the rape of the women who live there – what happens to the land is enacted on the women’s bodies
• Mother-daughter struggles within matriarchal communities as part of coming-of-age tales; but I think this aspect would have hit a bit harder if a woman from a Welsh matriarchal family had written it
• Yma o hyd vibes, but also it’s a lament and a bleak ending

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Apostle (2018) dir. Gareth Evans, written by Gareth Evans

• Period horror-thriller – nonconformist political cult on an island led by Michael Sheen, religious Gothic
• Plays into the cults of personality around Welsh nonconformist ministers and connections between chapels as places of religious meeting houses and political discussions for working class men at that time
• Isolated rural community as place of entrapment
• Land personified; abuse of the land/entrapped by the landscape (Welsh Gothic trope)

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