The adaptation of Andrew Michael Hurly’s novel conjures serious British folk horror. Watch the trailer at Empire.
There’s a long and rich history of nerve-fraying folk horror in British cinema. From Witchfinder General to The Wicker Man, and A Field In England to small-screen offerings like recent Doctor Who chiller ’73 Yards’, these isles have proven perpetually fertile ground for tales of eldritch terror. And into that canon is about to come writer-director Daniel Kokotajlo’s (Apostasy) Starve Acre. An adaptation of Andrew Michael Hurly’s same-named novel, the film sees Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark star as a couple whose rural family bliss is disrupted when their son begins acting very strangely. Check out the atmospheric trailer for the movie below:
With its folk legends of ‘Dandelion Jack’, candlelit séances, creepy kids, reanimated rabbits, and grim-faced stars, the rain-lashed and mud-strewn Starve Acre looks like it’ll be right at home amongst its rural horror peers. Here’s the official synopsis, offering some tantalising clues as to what’s going on: “In rural Yorkshire in the 1970s, Richard (Smith) and Juliette Willoughby’s (Clark) seemingly idyllic family life is thrown into turmoil when their young son Owen starts acting out of character. A sudden, tragic event brings grief and drives a wedge between the once happy couple. At Starve Acre, their remote family home, academic archaeologist Richard buries himself in exploring a folkloric myth that the ancient oak tree that once stood on their land is imbued with phenomenal powers. While Juliette turns to the local community to find some kind of peace, Richard obsessively digs deeper. An unexpected discovery soon occupies the couple’s attention and dark and sinister forces, unwittingly allowed into their home, offer a disturbing possibility of reconnection between them.”
Honestly though, why do none of these families ever just up sticks and move to the city? There’s at least slightly less chance of unearthing dormant evil when you’re raiding the reduced to clear at the big Tesco. Horror fans will surely get a kick out of seeing Morfydd Clark — soon to be found getting her Galadriel on once more in The Rings Of Power Season 2 — returning to the genre following her star-making turn in Saint Maud. Check out the hauntingly beautiful poster that came along with the new trailer:
Starve Acre is set to release in UK and Irish cinemas on 6 September. In the meantime, we’re off to pour some salt circles and stock up on crucifixes… better safe than sorry!
As work trips go, Sergeant Howie’s visit to Summerisle to investigate a report of a missing girl must rank as the most disastrous of all-time. A devout Christian and serious-minded man of the law, he is mocked and tricked from the minute he steps on land to the moment he is carried into a giant wicker effigy to meet his grisly end while they dance and sing deliriously around him. Suddenly a two-day conference in Letchworth doesn’t look so bad.
This week marks 50 years since The Wicker Man was released in UK cinemas as a lowly B-movie to Don’t Look Now. Given its chaotic production, mishandled release from a distribution company who hated it, multiple cuts and missing negatives (the best guess is they were used as road fill for the M3), its current status as one of the greatest British/cult/horror films has certainly been earned the hard way.
Watching the film today, that otherworldly atmosphere which made it so compelling is, if anything, enhanced by the passing of time. Set almost entirely in daytime, with no genre tricks and jumps, and a smiling cast of charming hedonists that wouldn’t look out of place in a Carry On movie, it’s far from a conventional horror.
It’s the film’s flawless soundtrack, from the alluring ‘Corn rigs’ opener through to the closing ‘Sumer is a cumen’ that creates much of the unease. That the composer, Paul Giovanni, who managed to create such a mysterious and powerful take on traditional British folk traditions, was a 21 year-old New Yorker is another of the film’s remarkable sideplots.
As ‘Midsommar’ unleashes its nasty festivities on moviegoers, we remember these demented little films that paved the way.
By Kieran Fisher
The majority of horror subgenres boast basic characteristics that make them easy to summarize. For example, slasher films focus on killers who stalk and slash their victims. Haunting movies, meanwhile, center around people being tormented by poltergeists and other supernatural menaces. You get the idea. Horror might be fascinated with strange forces, but its various subgenres’ rules and conventions are simple for the most part.
Folk horror, on the other hand, is a difficult subgenre to canonize. As genre scholar and author Adam Scovell notes, the term fluctuates so often that its definition is not always easy to pin down outside of a few popular examples of movies, TV shows, etc. So, what exactly is folk horror?
The definition is often simplified as the symbiotic relationship between horror and folklore. Whether that’s stories mined from real-world folk tales or fictional ideas with a folkloric aesthetic, this definition is logical. Unfortunately, it’s only one strand of a subgenre that encompasses so much more than that.
Not every folk horror story explores folklore. Some of them are rooted in the occult and witchcraft. Others adopt a more realistic form of storytelling and chronicle terror that doesn’t feature deranged cults and witches. But there are certain themes which unify a myriad of works and make them folk horror.
Landscape and environment is an essential theme of the genre. These tales are set in the countryside or rural regions, and often present the juxtaposition between lush, pastoral scenery and cruel, horrific terror. These settings give the films a strong visual aesthetic, but they’re also a key component of another theme that defines the genre: isolation.
Folk horror is concerned with characters and communities who are located out of the way of urban environments. As such, they have developed their own skewered belief systems, which results in violent and twisted acts being carried out on the unfortunate victims who find themselves caught up in the madness. These communities have ranged from pagans to hoodie gangs, and they can be any group of people who live beyond the fringes of normal society.
The origins of folk horror can be traced back to the silent film era. The Golem and The Phantom Carriage take their cues from folklore and superstition, but it was 1922’s Haxan — with its disturbing images of witchcraft and ancient belief systems intruding on rural settings — that laid the foundations for traditional folk horror to grow from decades later.
Three particular films — the “Unholy Trinity” — are often hailed as the progenitors of folk horror: Michael Reeves’ WitchfinderGeneral, Piers Haggard’s TheBlood On Satan’s Claw, and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man. Let’s take a look at them.
Witchfinder General (1968)
Based on Ronald Bassett’s novel of the same name, which sensationalized the exploits of the 17th-century witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General is a cruel and shocking film about a lawyer (Vincent Price) who’s been appointed by the British Parliament to investigate sorcery, Satanism, and witchcraft in the English countryside. However, he uses his position to advance his own interests at the expense of innocent people.
Despite its historical inaccuracies and exaggerations, the terror that takes place in Witchfinder General is presented so sincerely that its depiction of the past seems authentic. It’s a movie about politically motivated evil and how human paranoia can be manipulated by those in power with their own selfish agendas at heart.
The story’s rural setting and engagement with isolated belief systems provides the folk horror component. That said, Witchfinder General differentiates itself from its genre peers by being more overtly political and less interested in adhering to a typical horror movie framework.
The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971)
This movie is a prime example of the intersection between folk horror and occult horror. While both subgenres are entirely different, they have been frequent bedfellows throughout the years and they complement each other well.
The Blood On Satan’s Claw takes place in Medieval Britain and sees the children of a local village convert to devil worship. The movie retains certain hallmarks of Satanic and possession flicks, but the isolated setting and the community members with deranged beliefs makes the movie unmistakably folk horror.
The Wicker Man (1973)
When it comes to movies about odd communities with their own wacky belief systems causing mayhem, Robin Hardy’s 1973 movie is by far the most popular of the bunch.
The story revolves around a Christian policeman (Edward Woodward) who visits a Scottish island in search of a missing girl. What he finds there, though, is a group of inhabitants with a penchant for singing, dancing, public nudity, and ritualistic sacrifice.
The Wicker Man is a movie about conflicting ideologies, which is a recurring theme in folk horror films. The practitioners of the latter need to commit atrocities in order to preserve their traditions and way of life, but like the denizens of other movies of this ilk, their isolation has led to collective madness.
Folk horror is one of the oldest and most popular horror subgenres, but defining it and capturing its aesthetic can be difficult.
By Jordan Maison
Folk horror is among the most popular — and oldest — subgenres of horror and has seen a resurgence in recent years. Between heavy thematic elements and more simplistic settings, it’s a prime genre for indie filmmakers to get into.
Defining and incorporating all the elements that make folk horror what it is, however, can be a tad difficult. If you’re delving into folk horror for an upcoming project, we’re here to help you sort it all out, ensuring you bring an authentic experience for audiences.
Where did folk horror originate?
A scene from “Häxan” (1922). Image courtesy: Skandias Filmbyrå
Depending on who you ask, folk horror as a film genre originates in Britain during the early 70s. Meanwhile, other countries lay claim to folk horror films as early as 1922 — with the Swedish film “Häxan” (1922) — having all the hallmarks. In most of Asia, one could argue nearly all its horror films fall into the genre. There’s no specific set of rules/themes. Instead, it’s about garnering a specific atmosphere. It dabbles into many different genre elements while still being uniquely itself.
The origin of the “folk horror” term is easier to pin down. It originated in 1970, used by the British film magazine Kine Weekly. When talking about the film “The Blood on Satan’s Claw” (1971), originally titled “The Devil’s Touch,” reviewer Rod Cooper coined the term “folk horror” for the first time. Years later, in 2004, the director of “The Blood on Satan’s Claw,” Piers Haggard, would use the same phrase during a retrospective interview in Fangoria magazine:
“I grew up on a farm,” Haggard explains. “It’s natural for me to use the countryside as symbols or as imagery. As this was a story about people subject to superstitions about living in the woods, the dark poetry of that appealed to me. I was trying to make a folk-horror film, I suppose. Not a campy one.”
For many, the loose set of guidelines Haggard mentioned became the defining aspect of the subgenre. Folk horror, however, goes beyond that. At its simplest, folk horror can be any horror film that utilizes folklore elements to drive the story forward and bring the fear factor. No matter how you try to define it, what matters most when it comes to crafting a folk horror project, is capturing the intention of the subgenre.
Setting itself apart
Folk horror differentiates itself from the larger horror genre in several ways. While the ultimate goal is to leave you feeling unsettled and anxious, folk horror doesn’t lean into traditional jump scare tactics or gory imagery. Those aspects can still be used but aren’t the primary factor driving the scares. Instead, it pulls from local folklore, which changes depending on your location. We’re talking about standard urban legends or creepypastas that originated as modern online stories. Folk horror dives into the myths/legends specifically tied to a history and culture.
By and large, folk horror derives its chills in audiences by tapping into our most basic instincts about fear. Those childhood fears born of fables used to teach and protect, which eventually morphed into stories intrinsic to specific cultures. Folk horror takes elements of these stories and presents them in a fresh way that touches upon our innate fears.
WHILE THE ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO LEAVE YOU FEELING UNSETTLED AND ANXIOUS, FOLK HORROR DOESN’T LEAN INTO TRADITIONAL JUMP SCARE TACTICS OR GORY IMAGERY.
The story of Hansel and Gretel (and its many horror adaptations) is an excellent example of this at work. The story is a cautionary tale about strangers and trust, tapping into our fears of the unknown and being left alone. It’s perfectly suited for horror, despite its fairy tale origins.
What does folk horror include
We can debate the specifics of folk horror’s definition, but there are several tropes associated with the subgenre. If you’re looking to create your own folk horror video, these are some of the elements you’ll want to consider including:
Religion/The occult: If there’s one defining trope when it comes to folk horror, it’s this one. Every folk horror project includes an obvious connection to religion or the occult (witches, paganism, mystics, etc) as an integral role in its overall plot.
Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” (1984) is a prime example of this. The film’s religious cult of children drives the ritualistic killing of adults while worshipping a deity known only as “He Who Walks Behind the Rows.” Similarly, TV shows such as “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home” (1978) or the more recent “The Third Day” (2020) also focus on outsiders and pitting them against fervent cultists.
Dealing with the unknown: Supernatural forces/elements often factor into folk horror stories — e.g. “The Witch” (2015) and “Apostle” (2018). Those supernatural elements, however, are not the primary source of fear in the story. Instead, the terror comes from how characters adapt to it or use it to further their own power.
Perhaps a community forms around the needs/benefits of a supernatural being. In order to maintain the status quo, the community finds themselves doing horrendous things. Such is the case with Gareth Evans’ “Apostle” (2018), where the creature at the heart of the story itself isn’t scary in and of itself. Rather, it’s the acts villagers commit in its name that bring the terror.
In other parts of the world, folk horror has far more direct connections to the supernatural. Most Asian folk horror put the focus on some manner of vengeful spirit — or demon — terrorizing unsuspecting mortals in period settings. “Kuroneko” (1968) and “Onibaba” (1964) are early examples of this, coming out in Japan in the 60s.
IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD, FOLK HORROR HAS FAR MORE DIRECT CONNECTIONS TO THE SUPERNATURAL.
Being isolated: Isolation is a crucial factor in folk horror movies. Isolation can have a number of meanings depending on the context of the story. Typically, isolation in folk horror is more about people finding themselves as outsiders coming into an established community.
In Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” (2019), Dani and Christian find themselves alone amid a sinister cult. Robin Hardy’s classic film, “The Wicker Man” (1973), features a similar situation. The film is about a police officer investigating a disappearance, only later finding himself as the prime target for an ancient pagan sacrifice.
The Indonesian horror film “Satan’s Slave” (1976) takes a different approach to the idea of isolation. Instead of putting the characters in new locations, it presents them instead as people who cut themselves off from their own faiths and religious backgrounds. In doing so, they unwittingly bring terror to themselves in the form of ancient demons.
Rural settings: Setting ties into the isolation factor as many folk horror projects take place in some sort of rural or older setting. The key factor, however, isn’t just about where things take place but the feelings connected to those locations.
Whether it’s a secluded farm, a retreat nestled away deep in the woods, an island or even a rundown town, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is there’s a sense of connection to the setting being of “the old world.” Audiences should feel they’re dealing with something ancient and powerful. In this, even modern movies can fit the folk horror mold (e.g. “Candyman” (1992), “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), etc).
Unsettling endings: Folk horror won’t leave audiences feeling warm and fuzzy. There are rarely — if ever — any surviving characters to cheer on as they escape their predicament. These projects will leave viewers completely unsettled.
Sometimes this takes the form of the protagonists failing or dying, but folk horror likes to subvert expectations. Frequently, we see protagonists end up joining in the horrors they’ve endured. Rather than overcoming the circumstances, they become willing participants.
We saw this in “The Witch” (2015) as Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin joins the dark coven. Similarly, in 2011’s “Kill List” (2011), a hitman comes up against a brutal cult, ultimately ending with the cult crowing him as their new leader.
A scene from “The Witch” (2015). Image courtesy: A24
A lasting impact
While enthusiasts may dispute its overall history and origins, folk horror is proving to be an evergreen subgenre in horror. The concept of outsiders coming against old-world forces rarely gets old. Folk horror’s deep roots in folklore and culture provide a wealth of ideas that have yet to be tapped on the big — or small — screen.
