# Folk Horror > 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. Also known as folk horror film ## 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](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/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 **A visitor misreads the harvest festival** ``` 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. ``` 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](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/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](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/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](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/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. ## Official sources & context Sources reviewed Nov 7, 2026 - [Wikipedia — Folk horror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_horror) ## 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. ## Related terms - [Cosmic Horror](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/cosmic-horror): Horror built on the fear that the universe is vast, ancient and indifferent, and that humans are too small to understand it. Its terror is forbidden knowledge and beings that cannot be named, from H. P. Lovecraft to Annihilation. - [Southern Gothic](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/southern-gothic): Fiction set in the American South that uses Gothic decay, secrets, violence and grotesque characters to show a past that has not passed, as in Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and True Detective. - [Setting](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/setting): Where and when a story takes place: its location, time period and social world, along with the mood they create. In a screenplay, every scene heading states a setting. - [Worldbuilding](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/worldbuilding): Designing the world a story happens in: its rules, history, powers, institutions and what each of them costs. In a script, the world shows through what characters can do, what stops them and what it costs them, not through explanation. --- Canonical page: