For me, the term “folk horror” brings up certain images of the UK: from M. R. James’s desolate Suffolk beaches (Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad [1904]) to the burning wicker man on the fictional Summerisle (The Wicker Man [1973]), from Vincent Price’s marvellous version of Matthew Hopkins (Witchfinder General [1968]) to creepy images of standing stones in TV shows such as Doctor Who (1963-) or The Stone Tape (1972). Yet for readers in other countries, the term will resonate in as many ways with their own culture I’m sure. So when I say this novella from Jacy Morris is a folk horror tale, you should remove all cultural preconceptions from your mind. Unless you are, perhaps, a native from the very north of Canada.
Regardless, folk horror stories are inevitably steeped in a tradition. We Like It Cherry is no different, and the prologue explains why the people of the fictional Winoquin tribe have their traditional reasons for what follows in this story, which is a gruesome enough introduction to both their traditions and the contents of Morris’s imagination. The Winoquin people, as many Indigenous peoples tend to be portrayed in fiction, are heavily reliant on their stories and their ancestral beliefs. For example, they can see their ancestors in the sky when the aurora borealis dances. This reflects a truism in the real world: Humanity as a whole has based society on those that came before them, especially on the wishes of the dead, and it is only in recent times—when the majority of people whom we might deem as important or key in families, community, and society are not taken in their prime—that respect for ancestral traditions is falling away. Hand in hand with this are the consequences of colonialist capitalism, which has sought to erase cultures that it perceives as a threat, forcing them into smaller and smaller landscapes … and forcing them to fight back. Thus, the prologue shows the first time that Winoquin meet outsiders, people with “no souls, no spirits, no names, and that’s why their skin was pale and their eyes even paler.” The Winoquin think of them as demons, especially when they demonstrate the arrogance to take their women. What follows is ritual cannibalism—the pale men becoming as red as cherry.
The main body of We Like It Cherry, though, follows the story of Ezra Montblanc, who is the host of an American Indigenous—and apparently very cynical—reality TV show (perhaps the network are trying to hit a diversity quota). All its “tribal” goings-on are done for the tourists, really; Ezra—who is having a secret relationship with Stu, his cameraman—is wondering why life hasn’t turned out like he’d hoped. Then a member of the Winoquin, who calls himself Maq, turns up at a shoot and invites Ezra to visit the tribe in a remote part of the Arctic: There is a rare winter festival coming up and it is something the Winoquin have agreed to have documented. After all, their glacier is shrinking—thanks to the actions of the rest of the world’s populations—and they may never be able to visit it again.
The network jumps at the chance to get a documentary of a relatively unknown hunter-gatherer nomadic tribe and agrees to send Ezra and Stu—along with producer Scott and soundman Jonesy—north. Ezra sees the opportunity to free himself from his routine life and to carve a future with Stu. It will be a difficult trip—the festival takes place on the aforementioned remote glacier—but Morris’s adventurers put their faith in the Winoquin to get them there. I found it a tad surprising that these four would go that far north without some kind of expert on the conditions among their number. But that would probably have prevented some of the narrative unfolding as it does.
Similarly, Morris puts some fairly expected, if not quite clichéd, language into Maq’s mouth. Maybe it is to fulfil obligations to storytelling tropes or maybe this is how these Indigenous people expect “Westerners” want them to sound, and so they live up to the stereotypes. But Maq talks about the dark being the best time to see things, and how “eyes are lies”; once the team is with the tribe, they learn a little about their ways and why they have remained separate from the world—they just want to be left alone. They have a simple existence believing in balance of life and death, the sacredness of home, and the fact that things are as they are. “Why is the sun the sun?” Maq asks when the group wonder why the island they are travelling to is sacred. Underneath this performance, though, is something else: “The polar bears are disappearing,” Maq says at one point. “The whales wash up on the shore, too hungry to want to go on living. Our world is going away, because of you people down south.”
The world of these southerners is also evoked: The nod to Anthony Bourdain’s travel show is an interesting touch and will be appreciated by others familiar with it; there are references to both Spider-Man and Monty Python. Similarly, Morris uses Castlevania and Hellraiser as particularly vivid ways of describing death. However, what really elevates We Like It Cherry are the rounded personalities that sit alongside these cultural references. Ezra is a worrier, probably as a result of being abandoned by his parents when he was a boy. He worries about his career, and his relationship with Stu. He worries about how small he feels in the world. Jonesy, on the other hand, has no problem enjoying new cultural experiences and relishes eating alongside the tribe.
The first sign of potential trouble comes with the ritual skinning and eating of a raw seal, something our protagonists dutifully if reluctantly partake in. And then it’s the turn of Ezra to eat an eyeball, which will purportedly allow him to see further, and, remarkably, he manages both to swallow and thank the tribal elder for the honour. Next comes a distraction, and not the first: In a chapter entitled “The Orcas,” it is time to go to the glacier, which must be reached by traditional boat. The expedition comes across a pod of orca, which Maq explains the tribe do not kill because the creatures have long memories and it is “better to leave them alone.” The metaphor for ancestral memory, while obvious, is appropriate. The titular whales move on, never to be seen again.
Once the boat reaches the glacier, which Morris describes with a real vividness in both sights and sounds (“an aching, thunderous sound as it cracked and slid…the noise of its death, a high-pitched squeal could just be heard, as though the glacier itself was bemoaning its demise”), Ezra notices a red circle on an ice cliff. It has probably been there a very long time. But to get to the festival, the tribe and the team need to swim under the glacier and, according to tradition, do so naked, in the frozen waters. Our heroes are understandably reluctant (although Jonesy relishes the chance to show off). But the love between Ezra and Stu gives them both the courage required, despite an Elder enigmatically telling Ezra that “we like it cherry” before diving in. Now it is time for the horror element to emerge, along with the folk.
Now the tension rises, which is credit to Morris’s writing. Scott the producer makes the decision to go home, but the Winoquin and the ancestors have other ideas. Supernatural manifestations and ritual cannibalism soon lead to Jonesy and Scott being sacrificed and consumed. (Again, it’s a bit obvious that they are the ones to die first, but of course necessary to the plot that Ezra and Stu survive the initial horror.) Morris describes these horrors matter-of-factly: Eating Scott equates to eating a seal. An eye is removed with a wooden scoop; perhaps the tribe don’t see him as human, as those responsible for climate change perhaps no longer have empathy for those suffering its consequences. Stu, of course, is forced to film it all again, over hours and hours. Even though the Winoquin murder Scott, they are thankful for his sacrifice. Maq reveals that they are trying to appease the gods and ancestors with the ceremony. The aim is to stop the “southerners” shrinking the ice by their actions. The members of the tribe are also consumed: They are possessed by their ancestors’ spirits. Ezra has a mysterious dream of how the tribe come to know the English word “cherry,” when their ancestors first met and consumed the pale men: Originally, the tribe didn’t want to eat the visiting others; but it was their dead ancestors that needed the quarry. One of them happened to have cherries in their pack.
A decision is made to give Ezra a chance to survive: If he can outrun the tribe he can live, and Stu must film the efforts. If he can make it to a sacred spot where no harm can come to him then they will both live on. Ezra, given a three-hour head start, runs. An old spirit joins with Ezra, attracted by his purity, and guides the runner across the glacier. Now the second distraction comes to the fore. Strange, orange-skinned, green-haired creatures live in a glacial valley on the island and scare Ezra’s guest spirit into departing. These catlike and potentially alien beings come from nowhere in the story and interact with Ezra in peculiar ways. These creatures and the Winoquin, in turns out, have an ancient feud. But the watching spirit simply waits until the creatures’ curiosity is sated and re-enters Ezra, returning him to his running challenge. As with the orcas, I’m not entirely sure what this encounter brings to the story other than re-emphasising a key theme, in this case the perilous nature of climate change to life in the Arctic.
Eventually, the Winoquin, with Stu tagging along while being ignored, catch up with Ezra just as he’s reaching his destination. He reassesses his life choices as he hopes to survive his challenge, just as an avalanche hits, burying him. He is saved, of course, by the ancestral spirit, who thinks Ezra would have made a good Winoquin. Once Stu pulls Ezra free of the snow and the Winoquin catch up, they agree that he is one of the tribe “by heart” and let them go.
Morris is writing about cultural destruction due to climate change and how the “West” cares little for any other people or their traditions. This is why the folk elements of this horror are required: He is writing about tradition and belief and survival; about the Other both within and outside of our immediate experiences. Ezra and Stu are “others” to Scott, for example: Ezra is Indigenous and both are gay. But they are all “Others” to the Winoquin.
Through all this, the prose is at once poetic and tense and on occasion a little heavy-handed. The epilogue especially lays out the meaning of the story. Morris could hold back a little in some of his writing, allowing the reader to get the point from the metaphor rather than the text; but ultimately this is an enjoyable and suitably tense and gory exploration of how “Western” civilisation is negatively impacting the traditions of native peoples and their ancestral memories. The horror is real for these people—and so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if (and maybe when) they unleash some horror in return.