Horror Obsessive
Folk horror rarely gets a clean ending, and now it has lost one of the people trying to give it one. Justin Hardy, the eldest son of Robin Hardy, the director behind 1973’s The Wicker Man, has died at 61, just weeks before his own contribution to that legacy was set to premiere.
Hardy had completed Wrath of the Gods, a second sequel to his father’s original film, built from concepts and script fragments his father left behind. The film is scheduled to debut at FrightFest in London on August 28, and would close a loose trilogy alongside the elder Hardy’s 2011 The Wicker Tree.
Finishing a Father’s Unfinished Work
Wrath of the Gods stars Christiane Schaldemose as a woman who returns to an isolated North Sea island to bury her husband, only to be cast out by superstitious locals as children begin disappearing around her. Francis Magee, known to genre audiences from Game of Thrones, also stars. That premise, an outsider absorbed into an island’s closed belief system until the community turns on her, sits squarely in the tradition The Wicker Man helped define: folk horror as a story about what a community will do to protect its own myths.
Hardy and his half-brother Dominic co-wrote the screenplay after discovering their father’s archived notes, a process the pair had already documented once before, in the 2024 film Children of the Wicker Man and a 2025 companion book of the same title. That the sequel exists at all is the result of two sons spending years excavating what their father never got to finish himself, which makes finishing it into something closer to an act of mourning than a work-for-hire sequel.
A Premiere He Won’t See
“He was so full of life right to the end, and incredibly energised to be working towards premiering his latest film this month. We are all so proud of him and heartbroken he won’t be with us at his premiere. He was a man of family, of boundless creativity and of devotion for everyone he held dear.”
Hardy’s family shared that statement with the BBC, confirming a heart attack as the cause of death. The timing lands with particular cruelty: after years spent building toward a premiere that would close the loop on his father’s most famous work, Hardy will not be in the room when it finally screens.
Wrath of the Gods is still set to premiere at FrightFest on August 28. Folk horror fans will get their closing chapter. Its director, the person who fought to get it made, will not get to take the bow.
Quick Takes
- Justin Hardy, son of Wicker Man director Robin Hardy, has died at age 61.
- Hardy completed Wrath of the Gods, a second sequel to The Wicker Man, shortly before his death.
- The film premieres at FrightFest in London on August 28.
- Wrath of the Gods stars Christiane Schaldemose and Francis Magee.
- Hardy’s family confirmed his cause of death as a heart attack in a statement to the BBC.
