Folk Horror

CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! CHOP!

"It's the horror of rural England. It's certain kinds of churches, certain kinds of forest -– the shadows within dark green."

— Alex Garland regarding Men

Horror based on old folklore.

This subgenre of Religious Horror is less concerned with organized faiths and divine beings as much as it's concerned with the old folkloric rituals in isolated rural areas. Thus, while it can still focus on a modern religion, it is more likely to focus on the pagan faiths of yore. Demons, cults and goblins haunt the woods while regular people try to survive. Organized religion is most likely corrupt and/or useless, though sadistic clergymen can be the true danger. If you're lucky, you'll have one heroic Badass Preacher among the whole lot, but it might not do any good against beings much older than any god we know.

The phrase was popularized in 2010 by the BBC documentary A History of Horror; in an interview with Mark Gatiss, director Piers Haggard uses "folk horror" in describing the intent of his 1971 film The Blood on Satan's Claw. Haggard's film is one of three (dubbed "the unholy trinity") widely regarded as the Trope Codifiers of the genre, the other two being Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man (1973).

While the genre was most common in Britain in The '60s and The '70s (around the same time British folk music was having a moment of its own), folk horror can be from any region or any time, and there has been a "Folk Horror Revival" in the 2010s and '20s as these tropes come back into prominence along with the rise of Neo-Paganism.

Regardless of when it's made, folk horror is always deeply rooted in the concept of the past. Therefore, when it's not an outright Period Piece, a lot of folk horror will feature a modern City Mouse protagonist suddenly confronted with a forgotten and violent past — usually by traveling to a more rural, tradition-bound locale like a Town with a Dark Secret. Sometimes it's the other way around, with cozy modernity itself being invaded by some ancient danger.

Belief, fear, and culture are key themes, and often a greater threat than the thing people are scared of — therefore, Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane and Humans Are the Real Monsters are common tropes here as well. Things are dangerous enough even without overtly supernatural happenings. In fact, some academic work points to the "monstrous tribe" (a social group bound by shared beliefs and values seen as monstrous to visitors/viewers) as an even greater identifying feature of folk horror than the rural setting.

Compare with Witch Works, which has a lot of overlap, and Horror Hippies and Hillbilly Horrors, both of which have a similar rural horror feel. Watch out for The Fair Folk, take care with the Sleep Paralysis Creatures at night and Don't Go in the Woods. Often takes place in Lovecraft Country or Campbell Country. There may be overlap with Dark Fantasy or Supernatural Fiction, although some folk horror tales heavily tone down the supernatural elements, feature only mundane threats, or leave it ambiguous as to whether there is truly anything supernatural occurring. See also Gothic Horror and Southern Gothic, which have a lot of overlap with this subgenre in terms of settings, character types, themes and tone. In some ways, folk horror could even be seen as a modern take on gothic horror.

---

Folk horror works:

Comic Books

• Harrow County
• Hillbilly is set in a Dark Fantasy world based on rural Appalachia, haunted by hags and trolls
• Wendigo Wood

Film — Animation

• Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is a kid-friendly take on this genre, though still considerably Darker and Edgier than most entries in the franchise. The film is set in a Louisiana bayou haunted by ghosts and zombies and werecats (oh my!). It turns out the island was once home to a pagan cult who worshipped a cat deity and granted the villains their powers; voodoo magic also plays a role. Mystery Inc show up intending to capture footage of ghosts (or more likely disprove them, as they expect) and get more than they bargained for.

Film — Live Action

• Anazapta (US title Black Plague). A tale of supernatural Rape and Revenge set in a village beset by the Black Death.
• Angel Heart
• Apostle - sinister, violent happenings at a nature-worshipping Cult Colony off the Welsh coast.
• The Barrens straddles the line between this trope and cryptozoology, with a family of campers having a possible run-in with The Jersey Devil
• Black Death - a young monk is given the task of learning the truth about reports of people being brought back to life in a small village.
• The Blair Witch Project - fictional witchcraft legends in rural Maryland
  • Blair Witch
• The Blood on Satan's Claw - follows the residents of a rural village whose youth fall under the influence of a demonic presence after a local farmer unearths a mysterious deformed skull buried in a field.
• Bloodlands - a struggling family in mountainous northern Albania wrestling with tradition, must unite against a mysterious clan aggression.
• Bewitched (1981) - based on South-East Asian witchcraft.
• The Boxer's Omen - While in Thailand to avenge his brother who was crippled in a fight with a corrupt Thai boxer, a man gets caught up in a web of fate, Buddhism and black magic.
• Candyman - A ghost story dealing with modern Urban Legends and contemporary folklore
• Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
• Celia
• Children of the Corn
• City of the Dead - the other movie about occult happenings in a secluded Town with a Dark Secret to star Christopher Lee
• Cry of the Banshee - a cruel witch-hunting magistrate, who often tortures innocent villagers for his entertainment, runs afoul of a witch who conjures a banshee to kill the magistrate and his family.
• The Curse of La Llorona - loosely based on the Latin American folktale of the "The Weeping Woman".
• Curse of the Crimson Altar
• The Dark (2005)
• The Devil Rides Out
• Draug
• The Dybbuk - based on Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, a woman is possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved.
• Errementari - A Basque-language adaptation of an old legend about a blacksmith who keeps a caged demon in his home. This movie's unabashed use of some of the sillier folklore tropes - its Big Red Devils look straight out of old illuminated manuscript, and have Weaksauce Weaknesses like a compulsion to count spilled chickpeas - also gives it a deadpan Horror Comedy sensibility.
• Eye of the Devil
• Fear Street - 1666 - or at least the first half of it, which is actually set in 1666, and deals with a witchcraft and the attendant paranoia in a puritan colony
• The Field Guide to Evil - comprises treatises on forbidden love, Greek underworld goblins, medieval Hungarian cobblers and US hillbilly folklore.
• A Field in England
• The Ghost of Yotsuya
• The Golem - Based on old European Jewish folklore, a golem protects the ghetto of Prague, but at a terrible price
• The Hallow - A conservationist and his wife run afoul of The Fair Folk
• Halloween
  • Halloween III: Season of the Witch - A peculiar fusion of Cassette Futurism and ancient Druidic Human Sacrifice rituals
  • Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
• Häxan - a silent exploitation film inspired by old northern European witch-hunting manuscripts and occult folklore
• HEX — from Kwei Chi-hung, the same guy behind The Boxer's Omen
• Home Sweet Home (2005) - a horror-drama revolving around an Urban Legend of a child-abducting monster stalking a family
• In The Earth

• I Walked with a Zombie - a Gothic melodrama with roots in Caribbean folklore, Hollywood Voodoo, and naturally, Voodoo Zombies
• Jordskott
• Jug Face
• Kill List
• Krampus - A Bavarian yuletide demon terrorizes a modern-day family
• Kwaidan
• The Lair of the White Worm - Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi get mixed up in a horror story involving the Roman occupation of Britain and the legend of the Lambton Worm
• Mark of the Devil
• Men - A woman goes on vacation in the English countryside and is stalked by a malevolent entity. Director/writer Alex Garland explicitly referred to this film as being folk horror, stating one of the big focuses is "the horror of rural England. It's certain kinds of churches, certain kinds of forest — the shadows within dark green." It also uses the Green Man as a recurring visual motif.
• Midsommar - Occult practices in a rural Swedish communities where the Old Ways are still observed
• Mystics in Bali
• The Naked Witch
• Night of the Demon - Stonehenge, cursed runes, and occult traditions
• Oily Maniac - based on a Malaysian urban legend of the orang minyak, a supernatural entity made of crude oil
• Onibaba
• Pet Sematary (2019) - An adaptation of the novel of the same name
• Population 436
• Pumpkinhead - A supernatural Slasher Movie powered by Appalachian folk magic
  • Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings
  • Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
  • Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud
• The Queen of Black Magic
• Ravenous (1999) - Wendigo mythology and frontier cannibalism in 1840s California
• Rawhead Rex
• Red Riding Hood - a supernatural murder mystery combined with Paranormal Romance inspired by the fairytale "Little Red Riding Hood"; a medieval village is terrorized by a werewolf, with a zealous monster-hunting preacher leading a witch hunt for the culprit.
• The Ritual - Ancient occultism in the backwoods of Sweden.
• Satan's Slave
• Seeding of a Ghost
• The Serpent and the Rainbow
• The Shrine
• The Skeleton Key: Heavily based around hoodoo beliefs and practices.
• Trick 'r Treat - A Horror Comedy anthology about the traditions and superstitions of All Hallows' Eve
• Troll 2 - A Town with a Dark Secret populated by Horror Hippies. The dark secret is that they are actually Stonehenge-worshiping goblins in disguise.
• Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
• Unwelcome
• The Wailing
• Wake Wood
• Wendigo
• The Wicker Man (1973) - A Town with a Dark Secret steeped in Scottish paganism
• The Wicker Man (2006) - The above, but moved to the United States and with weird gender politics
• The Wild Hunt - A Viking-inspired LARP goes wrong
• Winterbeast is about a ski lodge being hit by the lingering effects of a Native American curse.
• The VVitch - A family in Puritan New England are terrorized by a Wicked Witch who might be imaginary
• The Witches (1966)
• Witchfinder General - A corrupt witch hunter terrorizes the Cromwell-era English countryside
• The Wolf Man (1941) - Together with the earlier Werewolf of London (which is actually more of a pulpy Sci-Fi Horror), this movie bridged the gap between werewolf folklore and the modern movie werewolf. Most of the "rules" of lycanthropy it codified were pure inventions on the part of the screenwriter, but they feel like actual old folklore.

Literature

• The Devil All the Time (and the 2020 film adaptation)
• Harvest Home
• "The Lottery": There's no supernatural threats or explicit references to pagan religions, but the short story still captures the same rural small-town horror this genre is known for and highlights the dark side of blind adherence to old traditions.
• H. P. Lovecraft would often mix a bit of folklore and history into the cosmic horror stories for which he is best known. Pickman's Model and The Dreams in the Witch House both tie into the Salem witch trials, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth draws on New English nautical traditions, mermaid folklore, and - to a lesser extent - ancient Mesopotamian mythology.
• In James Herbert's Once, some of the faerefolkis, elemental beings race memories of whom inspired human folklore, enjoy tormenting humans. Its demon-worshipping villain manipulates nature to insidious end, and conjures horrific phantasms.
• Pet Sematary: The crux of the plot is an ancient Native American burial ground (the Miꞌkmaq Tribe, specifically) where those who are buried come back to life...more or less. Naturally, things go horribly wrong with this.
• Alvin Schwartz' celebrated anthology Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is mostly old urban legends and campfire ghost stories, very few of them with any original author. All three books end with a bibliography, where Schwartz talks a little about the folkloric roots of each story, different versions that he's found, and things like that.
• The Silver John stories - Dark Fantasy Americana series inspired by rural Appalachian folklore, about a travelling guitar player encountering magic and monsters.
• Lovecraft's friend and contemporary August Derleth's short story "The Thing That Walked On The Wind" inadvertently shows the colonialist Unfortunate Implications that can underpin this genre, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police protagonist investigating disappearances and worship in a tight-lipped Native community. Eventually it turns out that all the Native people worship a monstrous wendigo-like god, and this is used to justify breaking up their community and putting all their children into residential schools.

Live-Action Television

• Children of the Stones (1976) - a Mini Series about a strange town surrounded by stones that move
• Doctor Who - 'The Stones of Blood' and 'The Awakening', among others.
• Play for Today - the episodes "Robin Redbreast" and "Penda's Fen"
• Supernatural dabbles in this sometimes, especially in its first few seasons, which featured such monsters as Bloody Mary, La Llorona, and the crossroads demon.
• The Terror: A fictional retelling of the lost Franklin expedition as a horror story, with inspiration from Inuit mythology.
  • The Terror: Infamy: An in-direct sequel series, this time based around Japanese ghost folklore.
• The Third Day (2020) - across two separate time periods, two different people are spirited to a very secluded English island
• The X-Files - some episodes are based around folktales and urban legends.

Tabletop Games

• Don't Walk In Winter Wood is a tabletop RPG designed to evoke the gloomy and atmospheric presence of old ghost stories and tall tales told around the campfire in the days of old. Players take on the role of villagers haunted by a mysterious woods that is bringing supernatural phenomena into their isolated little town. Major themes include pagan traditions and rituals, witchcraft, folklore, isolation and a focus on escaping terrifying otherworldly threats without dying or going mad in the process.
• The Crooked Moon, a fan-made Dungeons & Dragons supplement, set in a forest where it's always between midnight and the witching hour, where players face cults, witches, The Fair Folk, and Things That Go "Bump" in the Night.
• Vaesen Nordic Horror Roleplaying: The titular Vaesen are all beings from legends and folklore, and said folklore often gives important clues as to their natures, motivations, strengths and weaknesses.

Theatre

• The Rite of Spring is folk horror in dance form. The ballet is intended to be set in the distant past (specifically prehistoric Russia) and focuses upon a tribe performing a pagan rite to usher in spring, that ends with a young girl being forced to dance herself to death as a sacrifice to the earth. In addition to the disturbing story, the music and choreography are highly unsettling and give off a sense of primal fear and foreboding throughout, even before we get to the sacrifice scene.

Video Games

• Barrow Hill: Menaces from pre-Celtic times arise after being disturbed by archaeologists (first game) and teenagers (second game), and must be placated via folklore-inspired ritual offerings.
• The Excavation of Hob's Barrow: A woman Adventurer Archaeologist journeys to a small town way out on the English moors to investigate a mysterious barrow, and has to content with the local population being both a bit sceptical towards the strange woman scholar from the city poking around in their village, as well as the stories about the strange goings-on the last time someone tried to disturb the barrow.
• Fishing Vacation is set in a remote lakeside cabin in the mountains and features a book telling the story of Sedna, the Inuit ocean goddess which turns out to be highly relevant to the strange goings-on at the lake.
• Mermaid Swamp: The story is inspired by Japanese mermaid folklore and set in a remote mountain village surrounded by woods and an allegedly cursed swamp.
• The early portion of Resident Evil 4 plays up the tropes and imagery of an ominously insular, rural village with its own customs and religion that really hates outsiders, but you quickly discover that the villagers' violent behavior and single-minded devotion to the local religious figurehead are caused by a Puppeteer Parasite controlled by said figurehead, not any adherence to creepy old ways.
• Scarlet Hollow: Dealing with hauntings in the rural South.
• Unforgiving – A Northern Hymn: Set in the Swedish wilderness and based upon Scandinavian folklore and mythology.
• Until Dawn: It's revealed the true threat of the game are wendigos which roam the mountain the characters are stuck on, with several references to traditional folklore about the subject.

Visual Novels

• Higurashi: When They Cry: Combines Religious Horror, Psychological Horror, and murder mysteries in a rural Japanese village setting.
• Spirit Hunter: NG

Web Original

• Old Gods of Appalachia: The story depicts an alternate version of the real-life 19th and early 20th century Appalachia, but where the work of the mining companies and the industrial business unleashed Eldritch Abominations that had been trapped below the land. It follows the daily life of everyday Appalachians, and of folk-witches of the Appalachian countryside, who have to deal with the various monsters and supernatural threats this entails. The podcast relies heavily on the Appalachian folklore, taking inspiration from various urban legends, historical figures and ghosts stories.

---