ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes The Wicker Man (1973) and the Dionysian elements in the movie, a connection that is often noted but never in any extensive detail or depth. This chapter argues that this connection must be examined more robustly because of the critical insights it offers into the film’s conflicts. This chapter is not corrective; instead, it creates a framework for a greater understanding of the film’s Dionysian elements that, in turn, should help better locate the “folk horror” of the movie and the myth in the Indo-European narrative tradition within which the British and Irish cultures are situated.
