At the root of folk horror is our fear of the land. Not the dirt itself, but what lives in it, on it, or once did long ago. Of common folk whose ancient traditions are often tied to a remote island, small town or farm in the middle of nowhere. It is where protagonists are pitted against whole, seemingly quiet and quaint, communities where secrets are kept. Where sacrifice is part of life. And while there are many a film that fit this bill, none are more notable than the progenitor BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW (1971), the cornerstone that is THE WICKER MAN (1973), the modern movie the honors — and in some ways, subverts it — MIDSOMMAR (2019), and a relative newcomer that grows the genre in new directions, STARVE ACRE (2023).

The term folk horror (films) was first used in 1970 in Kine Weekly by reviewer Rod Cooper describing the production of what would become Piers Haggard’s BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW. Haggard would later adopt the phrase himself in a 2004 interview for Fangoria where the director contrasts his work with Gothic horror, noting his dislike of films like those produced by Hammer. Indeed, BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW has none of the trappings of Gothic horror. No decrepit castles. No undead monsters. No mad scientists. No hauntings. There’s a very different atmosphere of fear in folk horror. And BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW makes that clear from the start.

Set in rural England c.1860, BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW focuses on the corruption of a village by an ancient evil. After a farmer uncovers the remains of a mysterious creature, the town’s children, led by Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) begin to worship the devil, and a mysterious skin infection begins to infect people. There are problems with the film, and it may be among the weakest of the genre, but it is credited as the first (though some argue 1968’s WITCHFINDER GENERAL can make that claim [and they are wrong]). But as the first, 1971’s BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW deserves recognition.

BAD DAYS TO BE A CHRISTIAN

A few years later, the folk horror film that would set the standard for all such films to come, THE WICKER MAN, was released. The story of a conservative policeman, Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) searching for a missing girl on a Scottish island where the inhabitants celebrate ancient agrarian traditions of Celtic Britain, THE WICKER MAN slowly unfolds as a clash between Christianity and neopaganism.

The island’s magistrate, Lord Summerisle (played with intense abandon by the always brilliant Christopher Lee) is, from the beginning, very hospitable with Howie, and quite open about the townspeople and their beliefs. Among many memorable exchanges between the two comes this dicussion of the clash of cultures.

Sergeant Howie: Your lordship seems strangely unconcerned.

Lord Summerisle: Well, I’m confident your suspicions are wrong. We don’t commit murder here. We’re a deeply religious people.

Sergeant Howie: Religious? With ruined churches, no ministers, no priests… and children dancing naked?

Lord Summerisle: They do love their divinity lessons.

Sergeant Howie: But they are… are naked!

Lord Summerisle: Naturally! It’s much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on.

At first, most on the island are very cooperative with Howie, but it soon becomes clear the sergeant is on a wild goose chase. Surrounded by temptations — including Summerisle’s own daughter, Willow (Britt Ekland) — Howie tries to hold on to his virginity and faith, unaware that he is being groomed for ritual sacrifice. And the audience knows long before Howie does that all of this will not end well for the buttoned-up policeman. It is their world, not his. Their ways, not ours.

Folk horror presents these worlds — and ways — in juxtaposition to the modern. But these strange communities are more than merely anthropological curiosities. Not unlike the lure of exploring a haunted house, yes, there is danger, but there’s also an attraction to some to explore the unknown.

Take, for example, the students of MIDSOMMAR (2019), directed by Ari Aster, (whose HEREDITARY from a year before is often celebrated as one of the best horror films of the twenty-first century).

In MIDSOMMAR, Sweden, not England, is the setting for the festivities, among a rural people that, like those in most folk horror films, have traditions that are not only alien to the outsiders, but in the case of MIDSOMMAR, downright shocking from the get-go!

In the film, Dani (Florence Pugh), the main protagonist, joins boyfriend Christian (symbolism alert), with whom her relationship is strained (due to his emotional distance in the wake of the death of her family) and travels with a few of his graduate student friends to their Swedish friend Pelle’s ancestral home in the rural Hälsingland region. They go to study the people and their once-every-ninety-years midsummer festival.

Rather quickly, things go sideways.

In a sacrifice of elders thatnot long into the film, it is almost as if Aster is upping the ante over WICKER MAN as he establishes horrific rituals early on. Friend Pelle normalizes the experience, saying it is part of tradition, as the others seem to just accept that they are strangers in a strange land.  But just as the students begin to adjust to the goings on and be embraced by the people, some of them begin to disappear. Meanwhile, Christian is eyed by a woman desirious of him becoming the father of her baby. And Dani is crowned May Queen.

All hell does eventually break loose, and the culmination is a fertility ritual where Christian impregnates a woman while surrounded by a cheering section of naked women, old and young. He even gets a little help with a nudge from behind. Dani witnesses the event, and has a panic attack. As the movie moves toward its conclusion, we learn that the dead elders and missing friends were part of a larger ritual sacrifice that requires 9 bodies. As May Queen, Dani gets to select the ninth. Will it be a native member of the community, or Christian? There’s no need to spoil it, but let’s just say that Aster’s subversion of WICKER MAN lies in Dani’s decision. The danger is not without, but within. And the audience is left to decide for themselves why she chooses as she does. Has she “gone native?” The camera lingers on her all decked out in May Queen accoutrements. Roll credits.

A NEW BREED

Where does folk horror go from here? 2023’s STARVE ACRE takes the traditionally communal aspects of folk horror and turns them inward, telling a tale of domestic dread. It is still a story rooted in nature, with a rural setting and a central sacrifice, but here, the tropes of folk horror are made familial.

Starve Acre is the story of archaeologist Richard (Matt Smith) and his wife Juliette (Morfydd Clark), who move to the husband’s remote family home in the English countryside. Tragedy strikes when their young son —  a boy who had become increasingly violent as he comes under the influence of an imaginary friend / malicious sprite named Jack Grey — dies suddenly. The grief drives Juliette to depression, and Richard, to obsession, as the latter turns to unearthing both the roots of an ancient oak believed by the land’s seventeenth-century inhabitants to be a portal to other worlds, and his own father’s occult journals (which reveal not only the father’s own obsessions, but the abuse of his son).

With cinematography that evokes the colors and saturation of seventies cinema, and a soundtrack so unnerving that the music alone can make any viewer quite uncomfortable, STARVE ACRE, like most representative folk horror films, is not a fun movie to watch. Here, the primary theme is grief, and the way that grief manifests — in the form of a hare that literally grows from a skeleton Richard uncovers during his backyard dig — is disturbing. Nature here is not something to be celebrated festival-style. It is, instead, sinew and bone and dirt and mud. It is sad. And it is sinister. As Richard and Juliette begin to care for the hare that has become a substitution for this lost child, Juliette’s sister Harrie (Erin Richards) is witness to the couple’s breakdown. Will she be able to save her sister? It’s a slow burn, and not a film for everyone. Dreary and sluggish in spots, it does, however, pay off in the end with a crescendo that will shock and disturb even the most hardened fans of horror.

FERTILE GROUND

Since the nineteen sixties, there have been at least a dozen or so films that have been labeled folk horror, but many of them have been, curiously, only made over the last decade. There’s the effective period piece A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2013), the derivative APOSTLE (2018), and the outright bizarre ENYS MEN (2022) — just to name a few. Even films like THE WITCH (2015) and the aforementioned HEREDITARY (2018) belong to the genre, though each of those leans further into witchcraft and paganism, eschewing the essential connections to agrarian practices, secret ceremonies, and human sacrifice that more traditionally come with the folk horror label.

Such subject matter is fertile ground for horror, and in the growth and harvest cycles of working the land can be found powerful metaphors for human life and death. These stories thrive because they connect us with the darker aspects of nature — both of the natural world, and of human nature.

And it is at the fundamental intersection of those elements that folk horror finds its terrible, beautiful source.