Friday, December 30, 2022, FACETS explores the darker side of enchantment with a double feature of Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984) at 7pm and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure (2015) at 9pm, two exquisite horror films that re-envision classic fairy tales to reveal the animal inside us all.

Fairy tales have their venom extracted, their teeth filed, their claws clipped, their spines plucked, and their poison scrubbed clean for fear of harming the children. Beautiful endings are stitched over ugly ones to set minds at ease. The horror genre is where fairy tales still have free reign to be creepy, somber, and tragic as they always were at their core. Early appearances of fairy tale horror films are The White Reindeer (1952), Viy (1967), and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970). Suspiria (1977) famously takes inspiration from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Guillermo del Toro weaves a new fairy tale with Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), as does Jennifer Kent with The Babadook (2014). These examples are but a few treetops of a dense, expansive forest where magic is dangerous and dread springs eternal.

The films in this double feature are inspired by two of the most familiar fairy tales. The Company of Wolves twists “Little Red Riding Hood” into a story of werewolves, and The Lure gives the merfolk of “The Little Mermaid” a craving for human hearts. Both films are powerful coming-of-age stories about girls who hunger for knowledge and experience, long to explore unfamiliar lands, and grapple with animal instincts. It’s a menagerie of not-quite-human beings who are empowered by their monstrosity.

This double feature is co-programmed by John McDevitt and Stephanie Sack.