Though the “folk horror” genre dates back to the silent era (Häxan, 1922, Sweden), recent films like Midsommar (2019, US/Sweden), La Llorona (2019, Guatemala), and The Medium/ร่างทรง Rang Song (2021, Thailand) demonstrate a renewed interest in folkloric horror stories from around the world.

As the editors of Folk Horror: New Global Pathways explain, “folk horror derives from folklore—from the roots of community and communal fears. And as such, one would assume that it has to be global, composed of variegated regional formations.”

In 2021, Kier-La Janisse and Severin Films released an extensive documentary about the history of folk horror, titled Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, along with an accompanying boxset called All the Haunts Be Ours, which contains 20 feature films. In 2024, Severin Films followed this up with All the Haunts Be Ours volume 2, containing 24 feature films. Both boxsets also contain a wealth of special features, including interviews, short films, and more.

In the fall of 2024, I taught a class on “Genre in Film” with a focus on folk horror. After 3.5 months of watching movies and discussing them with students, I put together the following list of the genre’s tropes, and an accompanying list of folk horror films.

Genre Tropes

Rural communities and locations

Folk horror stories often take place in rural communities and locations, such as villages¹ or very small towns,² farms and fields,³ forests,⁴ or islands.⁵

Films like Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach (1970, Poland), Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971, US), Ganja & Hess (1973, US), The Ash Tree (1975, UK), The Rites of May (1976, Philippines), and La Llorona (2019, Guatemala) locate their action primarily within a large, isolated house that operates as an outpost on the edge of a rural locale.

Others, like Lake of the Dead (1958, Norway), Hour of the Wolf (1968, Sweden), Deliverance (1972), Butter on the Latch (2015, US), and Midsommar (2019, US), take place during vacations or festivals in scenic rural locales.

Candyman (1992, US) is a somewhat rare example of a folk horror film with an urban setting, although one could argue that the Cabrini-Green housing project in the film serves as the 1990s equivalent of a farm or other rural place—an isolated community suffering from what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “organized abandonment.”⁶

Folk horror’s focus on rurality connects to the 19th-century origins of folklore studies, when European ethnographers traveled to rural areas to collect folklore from illiterate, poor communities.

The Outsider, Skeptic, or Ethnographer

Rural and isolated communities are thrown into relief by the arrival of an outsider⁷ or the presence of a skeptic.⁸ Sometimes this outsider is literally an ethnographer collecting folklore from the community,⁹ or an archaeologist or other academic studying ancient sites.¹⁰

Dr. Dejan Ognjanovic points out that the trope of the outsider coming into a folk community is more common in Western or Anglicized folk horror. In Slavic folk horror, he argues, “someone is already immersed in this value system, and whatever happens in this plot arises from within.”¹¹

Ancient sacred sites

Characters visit ancient sacred sites for research,¹² rituals,¹³ or simply as tourists.¹⁴

Many horror films from settler colonial countries include the cliché “Indian burial ground” trope, including The Last Wave (1977, Australia), The Amityville Horror (1979, US), The Shining (1980, US), Eyes of Fire (1983, US), Kadaicha (1988, Australia), Pet Sematary (1989, US), and Grim Prairie Tales (1990, US), to name just a few. But as Jesse Wente says, “there is no such thing as an Indian burial ground… [that is] a figment of the Western imagination.” Wente’s point is, in part, that Hollywood has reduced multinational peoples into one fictional category, “Indian.”¹⁵

Witchcraft, shamanism, and other forms of folk magic

Witchcraft in folk horror is often treated as an ancient practice that has been carried on through the centuries, surviving despite modernization,¹⁶ or as something that has been resurrected from a time long gone.¹⁷ It can be part of a region’s pagan past¹⁸ or treated as devil worship. We might differentiate these latter films from ones in which the Devil literally appears.¹⁹

Shamans also feature in folk horror films, especially films from cultures with shamanic traditions, such as The White Reindeer (1952, Finland), Io Island (1977, South Korea), and The Medium (2021, Thailand).

Other forms of folk magic, including hoodoo (often mistakenly referred to as “voodoo”),²⁰ rootwork, and brujeria, also appear in films like I Walked with a Zombie (1943, US), The Amulet of Ogum (1974, Brazil), Voodoo Black Exorcist (1974, Spain), Angel Heart (1987, US), The Believers (1987, US), and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988, US).

Cults

Isolated religious communities develop extreme beliefs and practices in films like Eye of the Devil (1966, UK), Crowhaven Farm (1970, US), The Wicker Man (1972, UK), Children of the Corn (1984, US), The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978, US), Alison’s Birthday (1981, Australia), Apostle (2018, US), Midsommar (2019, US), and Incantation (2022, Taiwan).

Human sacrifice

Cults and other religious groups ritualistically kill one or more humans (or at least try to) for the benefit of the community in films like Witchfinder General (1968, UK), The Lottery (1969, US), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971, UK), The Wicker Man (1972, UK), The Ritual (2017, UK), Tumbbad (2018, India), and Midsommar (2019, US).

Animal transformation

Both women and men transform into various animals, including bears,²¹ cats,²² reindeer,²³ wolves,²⁴ and llamas.²⁵ The transformation is often the result of a curse (as opposed to a bite).

Vampirism

Folk horror’s vampires are less Dracula and more Nosferatu—not sleek and urbane but monstrous and animalistic.²⁶ The major exception to this is Ganja & Hess (1973, US).

Vengeful ghosts

Culturally-specific versions of the vengeful ghost appear in films like Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit (1968, Japan), The Rites of May (1976, Philippines), Sundelbolong (1981, Indonesia), Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam (2004, Malaysia), Demon (2015, Poland), and La Llorona (2019, Guatemala).

Folk horror chain

In contrast to the above list, Adam Scovell’s “folk horror chain” is a narrative theory that suggests folk horror films are united by “a linking set of narrative traits that have causational and interlinking consequences.”²⁷ The four elements of the folk horror chain are:

• Landscape
  • Folk horror films emphasize the landscape in which they are set.
• Isolation
  • The landscape leads to the isolation of the characters.
• Skewed morals
  • Isolation leads to a skewed sense of morals or beliefs.
• The happening
  • The skewed morals or beliefs of the community lead to a happening (often a summoning).