From ‘Witchfinder General’ to ‘The Wicker Man’, British folk horror has inspired many horror movies from today, like ‘Midsommar’ and ‘The VVitch’.
By Aimee Ferrier
During the 2010s, a trend emerged that many dubbed ‘elevated horror’. It’s a lazy term, suggesting that all horror that came before it wasn’t artistic or explored deeper themes beyond scares and thrills. Regardless of the argument for and against ‘elevated’ horror, it is interesting to note that two of the most acclaimed movies from this period fell into the folk horror subgenre – The VVitch and Midsommar.
Both were distributed by A24 and became well-loved titles in the canon, praised for their exploration of themes such as trauma, gender, grief, life and death, and isolation. To explore these topics, the filmmakers used folklore as their foundation, calling upon old stories that have echoed through generations of humans, and the innate fears and beliefs that have followed people for centuries.
Perhaps that’s why these films came to be labelled ‘elevated horror’: at their core, folk horror relies more on creating a general atmosphere of fear through the exploration of human anxieties and the power of group beliefs, as found in religious cults and close-knit villages.
There is a lack of masked killers, extreme gore, jumpscares, haunting spectres, zombies, and vampires in folk horror. When the genre focuses on witchcraft, the audience doesn’t fear terrifying images of witches per se. Instead, the fear is often found in the humans that hunt them down as though they’re animals, attacking femininity and alternate ways of thinking that don’t align with an autocratic system of beliefs.
Thus, the folk horror genre has a particular allure, bringing us face to face with fears that have been carried down through generations and were experienced by our ancestors. No matter the year, folk horror movies explore themes that remind us of our heritage and that people have always been persecuted for being different and outcasts for religious or social reasons, even to the point of extreme violence and death.
Before Midsommar and The VVitch, and even more recent titles like Starve Acre, Lamb, Men, and Enys Men, British folk horror movies from the 1960s and ‘70s helped to pioneer the genre. Most people will be familiar with the Unholy Trinity: Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The Wicker Man. These movies, released between 1968 and 1973, took audiences to beautiful British countryside landscapes, only to reveal cult-like locals, tyrannical men in power, and intensely religious beliefs. In each film, female sexuality becomes incredibly important, too, with female bodies possessing a significant allure for male characters, who often find it hard to resist temptation, their morals thrown into question.
These movies are considered the cream of the crop as far as folk horror is concerned, with each containing unnerving and claustrophobic atmospheres heightened by strange characters whose ways of thinking are firmly stuck in the past. There is also a sense of isolation felt by certain characters who do not fit in, like Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man, who comes to mirror Dani in Midsommar in certain ways, although their endings are rather different.
The influence of these films has allowed a new revival of folk horror, perhaps because they’re the perfect vehicle for exploring themes of disillusionment and nihilism. We long for these quaint countryside scenes with green pastures and flowers growing, but these films subvert this idyllic imagery with a reminder of England’s dark past full of witch hunts and religious persecution.
The resurgence of folk horror within the 2010s and early 2020s mirrors its popularity in the 1970s, coming after the hippie boom and the swinging sixties. Perhaps, in our technology-ridden society, we desire to go back to basics – a desire complicated by the fact that the world hasn’t changed as much as we might think. Discrimination, misogyny, and religious divisions – common themes in folk horror – are still prevalent today. These newer folk horror movies remind us that the folkloric stories we were told by our grandparents – violent and strange tales passed down from their grandparents – are still etched into the fabric of our society.
Besides the Unholy Trinity, movies like The Devils, The Witches, Requiem for a Village, and Village of the Damned are all examples of British films containing folk horror elements. Additionally, slightly lesser-known works like Cry of the Banshee, The Devil Rides Out, and various Play for Today episodes and other BBC shorts, such as Robin Redbreast and A Warning To The Curious, further proved that folk horror was a popular trend in late 1960s and early ‘70s Britain.
In 1999, The League of Gentlemen emerged as a folk horror-esque series, using many conventions from the genre, such as small-town oddballs that look down on anyone who isn’t local and elements of the supernatural. Evidently, British cinema has never been able to shake the enduring influence of folk horror, which inspired a new wave of the genre in recent years to great success. While folk horror movies emerged in other countries too (think Häxan and The White Reindeer, for example), it is The Unholy Trinity that has made the genre so unforgettable and enticing, even decades later.
Source: Exploring the pioneering world of British folk horror