The Dreadful Review: Folk Without the Folk
Atmosphere without cultural weight is just decoration.
Adapting Onibaba into 15th-century England is a bold move, but The Dreadful never quite justifies that move.
Good Points
Sophie Turner
Some of the atmosphere
Visuals
Bad Points
Tonally confused
Lacks folk horror tension
Poor character writing
The ending is too surface-level
Sophie Turner deserves a stronger film.
Turner is good here, like genuinely good I thought, as Anne, but the problem is that Anne feels a bit too composed as a character, as you never truly feel like she’s trapped, which weakens the moral tension.
You’re meant to believe she’s cornered by survival and loyalty, but she often feels like she’s already planning her exit.
Marcia Gay Harden goes straight to villain mode.
Her character has some intensity, which is good, but she never really evolves, as it’s mostly just about control and intimidation from the outset, when it all should have felt a lot more suffocating instead of how rushed it did feel.
Kit Harington is fine.
He brings some charm and some solid screen presence, and yes, the chemistry with Turner works, but again, we also have issues with this character too.
He exists to create conflict rather than embody it, and while you obviously don’t need to love him - but you should at least understand him.
None of these issues are the actors faults, they are just poorly written.
Where’s the dread?
The movie looks atmospheric, and is at times, but it rarely feels threatening, and compared to the raw, suffocating environment of Onibaba, this version just feels like staged scenery aiming to just look pretty.
The ending plays it too safe.
The ending leans into a somewhat modern empowerment beat that feels tonally off, and you’re waiting for the moral ambiguity and haunting consequences it should be delivering, but what you get is something cleaner and more triumphant - satisfying in a surface-level way I suppose.
It doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Folk Horror? Psychological drama? Period horror? Suspense thriller?
It’s kind of all of the above, but only in small parts, and the result feels stitched together, with some interesting ideas wrapped in poor execution.
England in the 1500s should be a perfect soil for folk horror, yet the film barely digs into it - there’s no cultural weight, no sense that survival is a daily grind against nature and social hierarchy.
You want this setting to feel inhabited, but you feel nothing.
Decent cinematography though.
Final Verdict
The Dreadful isn’t unwatchable, but it never captures the moral complexity or suffocating dread that defines great folk horror.
It all feels like a missed opportunity.