Folk Horror
Also known as folk horror film
Horror rooted in the countryside and its old beliefs, where an isolated community and its rituals turn on an outsider, as in The Wicker Man and Midsommar.
In practice
Folk horror is horror that grows out of a place and its people. The story is usually set in the countryside or on an island, far from the city, among a community that keeps old customs, festivals and beliefs. An outsider arrives, and the landscape, the villagers and their rituals slowly close around them.
The term became widely used after the actor and writer Mark Gatiss applied it in his 2010 BBC series A History of Horror to three British films: Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973). The genre returned strongly with Kill List (2011), The Witch (2015), Apostle (2018) and Midsommar (2019).
The fear in folk horror is rarely a monster. It is a belief that everyone around the hero shares and the hero does not, and a sense that the land itself is older and stronger than modern life. Many of its endings are not escapes but completions: the ritual the community was preparing all along takes place.
A folk-horror scene in screenplay form
EXT. VILLAGE GREEN - DUSK
Long tables under the oaks. The whole village eats in silence. A straw figure, taller than a man, waits at the head of the green. It wears a coat exactly like NORA's.
NORA
Is that meant to be me?
OLD MARGARET
(passing the bread)
It's an honor, dear. We only make one a year.
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Nothing threatening happens on screen. The dread comes from a custom that everyone understands except the visitor, and from a detail planted in the action line. Folk horror works by letting the audience read the ritual a step ahead of the outsider.
How folk horror works
The critic Adam Scovell described a pattern many of these films share: a landscape that shapes the people living in it, isolation from the outside world, a skewed belief system, and a happening or summoning that the story builds toward. Most folk horror has all four.
The genre reverses the usual horror question. Instead of asking how the hero will defeat the threat, it asks when the hero will understand what the community wants from them. Festivals, harvests, songs and children's games carry the story, because each one reveals a little more of the belief behind them.
Folk horror movies
The Wicker Man (1973): a devout police sergeant comes to a Scottish island to look for a missing girl and finds a community preparing its May Day rites. The ending is one of the most famous in horror.
Witchfinder General (1968): a witch hunter tours the English countryside during the Civil War. Here the cruelty belongs to the authorities, not the villagers.
The Witch (2015): a Puritan family is banished to the edge of a New England forest in the 1630s. Their faith, and their fear of the woods, tears them apart.
The Wailing (2016): in a Korean mountain village, a series of killings follows the arrival of a stranger, and a policeman turns to a shaman. It mixes folk belief, comedy and dread.
Midsommar (2019): American students visit a Swedish commune for a midsummer festival held every ninety years. Its horror happens in bright daylight.
Folk horror vs. cosmic horror
Both genres frighten with something older and larger than the hero. In cosmic horror it lies beyond human understanding entirely, out in space or deep time. In folk horror it is human and local: a faith, a custom, a village that agrees on something the hero does not.
That difference changes the ending. Cosmic horror ends in madness or insignificance, because there was never anything to bargain with. Folk horror ends in a ritual, because the community had a purpose all along and the hero was part of it.
How to write folk horror
Build the belief first. Decide what the community believes, which festival or ritual expresses it and what it needs from the outsider. Every custom the hero sees should be a piece of that belief.
Make the setting a character. Describe the fields, weather, woods and buildings in the action lines, and give the place a calendar: the story often counts down to a feast day.
Let the villagers be kind. Hospitality, food and invitations are more frightening than threats, because the audience suspects what they are for.
Plant the ending early. In Plot, a scene's notes can hold the clue each custom gives away, so you can check that the ritual at the end was prepared from the first act.
Common questions
What is folk horror?
Folk horror is a horror genre set among isolated rural communities, where old customs, pagan beliefs and the landscape itself threaten an outsider, as in The Wicker Man.
What are the three classic British folk horror films?
Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973), often called the unholy trinity of British folk horror.
Is Midsommar folk horror?
Yes. Midsommar (2019) follows outsiders invited to a rural commune's festival, whose rituals slowly reveal what the community wants from them, the core folk horror pattern.
What is the difference between folk horror and cosmic horror?
Folk horror's threat is human and local, a community's beliefs and rituals. Cosmic horror's threat lies beyond human understanding, in forces indifferent to people altogether.
How do you write folk horror?
Decide what the community believes and what it needs from the outsider, make the landscape and its calendar part of the plot, and plant the final ritual from the first act.