Among the Silent Trees: A Review of Emily Carroll’s “Through the Woods”

I’ve always been the kind of person who gravitates toward the more offbeat corners of horror. Give me body horror over slashers, psychological dread over jump scares, and comics that make me question reality over anything straightforward, especially if they’re indy comics. This is why, when I first cracked open Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods way back in 2015, I knew I’d stumbled onto something special—something that would crawl under my skin and set up camp there for the next decade.

Meet Emily Carroll: The Queen of Digital Dread

Before I lose myself in gushing about this collection, let me tell you about the mastermind behind it. Emily Carroll is a Canadian comics artist who’s basically revolutionized how we think about horror in the digital age. She’s not just drawing pretty pictures and calling it a day—she’s using the medium itself as a weapon of psychological warfare.

Carroll cut her teeth on webcomics, and it shows in all the best ways. She understands how to use space, pacing, and the simple act of scrolling or clicking to make your heart rate spike. Her work explores what she calls “queer feminist Gothic horror,” which sounds academic until you realize it just means she’s taking all the things that make women feel unsafe and turning them into literal monsters. Brilliant and terrifying in equal measure.

Her art style hits this sweet spot between fairy tale whimsy and nightmare fuel. She uses color like a scalpel—precise cuts of red against inky blacks that make even mundane scenes feel ominous. And her obsession with skin as a site of horror? Chef’s kiss. The woman knows how to make you uncomfortable with your own body, which is no small feat.

Warning: Mild spoilers lie ahead!

Into the Woods We Go

Through the Woods collects five interconnected horror tales, all orbiting around the central premise that strange things emerge from dark forests. It’s a simple concept that Carroll uses as a launching pad for exploring trauma, family dysfunction, and the particular horror of being a young woman in a world that doesn’t believe you.

“Our Neighbor’s House” – Winter’s Deadly Embrace

The collection kicks off with three sisters left alone when their father doesn’t return from a hunting trip. He’s given them clear instructions: if he’s not back by the third day, go to the neighbor’s house. Simple enough, right? Wrong.

The eldest sister matter-of-factly declares their father dead when he doesn’t return. Then the middle sister starts talking about a man at her window—a man in a wide-brimmed hat. One by one, the sisters vanish into the winter night, until only the youngest remains, trudging through the snow to reach safety. But when she arrives at the neighbor’s door, guess who’s there to greet her? The man in the hat himself, smiling and beckoning her inside.

I love how Carroll refuses to spell everything out here. Is this a supernatural entity? A human predator? Does it matter when the result is the same—three girls disappearing into the white void of winter? The ambiguity makes it infinitely more unsettling.

“A Lady’s Hands Are Cold” – Gothic Nightmare Fuel

This one reads like a Victorian ghost story that got hit by a freight train of body horror. A young woman marries into wealth and moves into her new husband’s mansion, only to be haunted by a spectral song about a murdered wife hidden in the walls.

The bride becomes obsessed with the keening melody, tearing apart the house with a hatchet until she finds the dismembered remains of the first wife. In a moment of twisted compassion (or madness), she sews the corpse back together with red ribbons. The dead wife rises, vengeful and grotesque, and all hell breaks loose.

This story showcases Carroll’s ability to blend fairy tale logic with visceral horror. The image of that ribbon-bound corpse shambling to life is burned into my retinas forever. It’s Bluebeard meets Evil Dead, and I’m here for every horrifying second of it.

“His Face All Red” – Brotherhood and Buried Guilt

Here’s the story that made Carroll a viral sensation, and for good reason. Two brothers hunt a dangerous wolf, but only one returns—the jealous, overlooked brother who’s just murdered his popular sibling and claimed credit for killing the beast.

Days later, the “dead” brother walks back into town, smiling and unharmed. His wife is relieved, the townspeople celebrate, but the murderer is slowly going insane with guilt and paranoia. When he returns to check the hidden corpse, he finds his brother’s mangled face staring back at him from the pit.

The genius of this story is how it leaves everything open to interpretation. Is the returned brother a ghost? A doppelganger? Does the guilty conscience create its own monsters? I’ve read this story dozens of times, and I still get chills every time I see that final panel—the red, ruined face in the darkness.

“My Friend Janna” – When Games Turn Deadly

Two teenage girls make money running fake séances, with one playing the medium while the other creates the spooky sound effects. It’s all harmless fun until they accidentally contact something real—something hungry.

Janna becomes the conduit for a parasitic entity that manifests as spreading red veins and an insatiable appetite for… something. She fills notebooks with increasingly unhinged scribbles while her friend watches helplessly as the thing wearing Janna’s face grows stronger. By the end, Janna is completely consumed, and the entity is already eyeing its next host.

This one hits different because it captures the specific terror of adolescent friendship—the intensity, the codependency, the fear that your best friend might be changing into someone you don’t recognize. Carroll uses supernatural horror to explore very real anxieties about growing up and growing apart.

“The Nesting Place” – Body Horror at Its Finest

The final story might be the most disturbing, and that’s saying something. A young woman visits her brother and his new wife, only to notice unsettling details—loose teeth, strange wounds, whispered conversations in the night.

She discovers the truth when she follows her sister-in-law to a cave: the woman is host to parasitic worm-like creatures that nest beneath her skin. These “babies” are how the species reproduces, and the plan is to spread them into the wider world through human hosts. The horror compounds when she realizes her brother is already infected.

I have a strong stomach for body horror, but something about those red, writhing things living just under someone’s skin makes my skin crawl every single time. Carroll’s ability to make the human body feel alien and threatening is unparalleled. This story epitomizes her obsession with skin as a site of transformation and terror.

Why This Collection is Worth Your Time

What sets Through the Woods apart from other horror comics isn’t just the gorgeous art or the expertly crafted scares—it’s Carroll’s understanding that the most effective horror comes from what we don’t see, don’t know, and can’t explain.

Each story operates on multiple levels of interpretation. Are these supernatural threats or human monsters? Psychological breaks or literal transformations? Carroll never gives us easy answers, and that ambiguity is what makes these stories stick with you long after you’ve closed the book.

The collection also showcases Carroll’s feminist perspective without ever feeling preachy. These are stories about women and girls in danger, but they’re not passive victims. They investigate, they fight back, they make difficult choices. Sometimes they win, sometimes they don’t, but they’re always fully realized characters dealing with threats both supernatural and disturbingly mundane.

The Verdict

Through the Woods is essential reading for horror fans, comics enthusiasts, basically anyone who appreciates the art of sustained dread. It’s a masterclass in atmospheric horror that proves comics can be easily as terrifying as any film or novel.

I’ve gifted this book more times than I can count, and it’s never failed to convert someone new to the church of Emily Carroll. It doesn’t matter if you’re a longtime horror devotee or just someone dipping your toes into darker waters, this collection will remind you why we’re drawn to scary stories in the first place.

Just maybe don’t read it and suddenly decide to go wandering alone in the woods at night. Trust me on this one.