FOLK HORROR

Lore of the land…

UNHOLY TERROR

The phrase ‘folk horror’ was coined by critic Rod Cooper to describe Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971). The director himself later adopted the term, although it didn’t enter the mainstream until 2010, when Mark Gatiss used it as the descriptor for an entire subgenre. Discussing key works of folk horror, Gatiss collectively dubbed Haggard’s film, Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973) as ‘the unholy trinity’.

OCCULT MOVIES

Lost in a Swedish forest, four friends stumble across a monster-worshipping tribe in The Ritual (2017); a man attempts to rescue his sister from a sinister community in Apostle (2018); and there’s necromancy afoot as Sean Bean searches for a plague cure in Black Death (2010)… A key preoccupation of folk horror is occult or pagan belief systems; over and over again, characters will eschew conventional religion in favour of ancient gods, arcane ritual and the supernatural.

IN A LONELY PLACE

‘What if the landscape was not only alive, but sentient?’ asks director Mark Jenkin, whose Enys Men (2022) explores the fascination of the Cornish standing stones. Jenkin’s question resonates across folk horror, so much of which is concerned with the rural and the isolated. Examples range from 1977 ITV fantasy drama Children of the Stones (a precursor of sorts to Enys Men) and The Wicker Man (remote Scottish island) to 2022’s Men (English village where everyone looks like Rory Kinnear).

OUT WITH A LAMB

Two tropes readily associated with the subgenre are human sacrifice and downbeat endings - thanks in no small part to Sergeant Howie’s fiery demise at the end of The Wicker Man, which feels both shocking and inevitable. The protagonist isn’t always destined for doom, though: The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019) both conclude with their abused heroines on the up as their friends/relatives meet grisly fates.

FIELDS OF WHEATLEY

If anyone is a modern keeper of folk horror it’s Ben Wheatley, whose 2011 breakout Kill List sees hitmen stray into the orbit of deadly cultists. Though Wheatley’s CV has remained eclectic (from Doctor Who to Rebecca to Meg 2: The Trench), he’s made vivid returns to the subgenre with the psychedelic A Field in England (2013) and pandemic chiller In the Earth (2021). ‘I’ve always been wary of the woods,’ he says. ‘They can kill you…’