There are few horror tropes that have tired themselves out more quickly than “don’t go into the woods.” We’ve seen it in cinema since the ’60s, reaching its short peak in the ’80s with films that even chose the trope as their titles. From slashers to creature flicks, horror has always made surface stabs at the innate fear of the woods, utilizing it only as a location in which horrors occur. Whether the church of Satan or the stalking grounds of a killer, the woods themselves rarely take action. Not in film, at least.
Reaching into the annals of weird fiction, one cannot avoid crossing the path of adventurer and author Algernon Blackwood, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While his early career consists of articles detailing his explorations of global wilderness, Blackwood is still known today for his ventures into horror and the fantastic. These tales draw on his own experiences, but spin them into something else, and regardless of the location, Blackwood’s villain is almost always nature itself.
This applies to his (arguably) best stories; several of his occult and supernatural tales take place in urban London, and while still entertaining and scary, they cannot reach the epic scale of his natural horrors. Blackwood evokes a landscape that is well-researched and complete. We trust in his description of the Montana forests, the Egyptian deserts, and the waters of the Danube, mainly because he explored them himself. When the weird elements enter, they seem to be a part of the landscape itself, because they are. We have no choice but to trust them, too.
Blackwood takes yet another approach that elevates his stories into almost existential fear—the characters cannot defeat their villain, as you can exorcise a demon or destroy a killer. They can merely escape, hopefully unscathed. In The Willows, the protagonists can survive only by remaining unnoticed; in “The Man Whom the Trees Loved" (included in the collection Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural), a woman must persuade her husband not to give into the forest, which wants him as its own. In these stories, even if the protagonist survives, their nightmares will still exist, too, and the terror may happen to you next.
Here we find horror that pairs not with repugnance, but with awe. Nature is a fascination to humanity for its beauty, but also for its expanse and ruthless danger. Blackwood personifies this danger in a completely valid way. It is not unreasonable to assume that he believed his terrors were realities—he belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, along with W.B. Yeats and fellow weird fiction master Arthur Machen. He saw the living fear in nature and was fascinated by it, but respected it above all else. His stories evoke terrors that are also beautiful. He has no desire to destroy them, just to avoid their wrath.
I’ve found a few films that approach this sense of fear: The Evil Dead literalizes it with several infamous scenes; though perhaps a controversial asset, The Blair Witch Project finds its only physical villain in the woods; and more recently, The Witch utilizes its location to increase tension and hopelessness. Yet, none of these films reach Blackwood’s level of awe, and perhaps no film can. The power of these stories lies in their descriptions. It is almost impossible to personify the woods visually without having them actually move (as in the Evil Dead films), and this is inherently cheesy. There are some things only literature can do.
Living so close to the mountains myself, I have found Blackwood’s brand of fear to be disturbingly and exhilaratingly accurate. At dusk, the trees seem to breathe, the mountain ridges prepare to break from their rock and stand up. It does not inspire repulsion, but instead wonder, and it commands respect. I find Blackwood’s tales to be cautionary ones. Go into the woods, but do not stray, and do not doubt their power.
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