If you go into the woods today...

Menacing-verdant too good to be true landscape plays an enormous part in Stalker. When Jackie was talking about that village in Dorset she mentioned that you "don't stray from the path", and this seemed to beautifully reference the film - all the terror engendered by the idea of the Writer going directly to the room without following the painful way round, the constant repetitions of "you don't do that here", "this is where you go", "this is how things work here". It's not just reverence, it's fear; if you stray from the path something terrible will happen. The Zone has its own internal logic and its own rules and woe betide those who try to fault them. It's as though the film is tapping into an earlier subconscious Russian narrative, the heavily wooded folk tales of Vladimir Propp, the kind of stories that gave birth to, say, Angela Carter; an older threat than the (possibly) nuclear one suggested by the film, but somehow similar, a faceless danger in the woods that will either kill you (if you don't behave) or cure you (if you do).