The wisdom of folk horror

I’m a longtime aficionado of horror fiction, and I was floored by Kier-La Janisse’s staggeringly ambitious 2021 documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. In its three-plus-hours running time, the film offers a sweeping survey of the genre of folk horror, touching on 200 films from all parts of the world. And even for those who are repelled by horror films in principle, the documentary opens the way quite surprisingly to discovering unexpected treasures on general religious themes, and specifically the theme of Christianity in the Global South. These films remind us of how faith must adapt to societies where older supernatural worlds are suppressed but by no means wholly exorcised.

The term “folk horror” was originally applied to British films that explored the idea that potent ancient forces and deep-rooted evils survive in the landscape, scarcely acknowledged by the modern world. Typically these dark forces are mobilized by sinister groups that deploy secret rituals dating from pre-Christian times. The plots commonly involve innocent outsiders entrapped in these fearsome proceedings and facing the prospect of a grisly sacrificial death. The best-known contribution is the 1973 film The Wicker Man, which regularly appears on critics’ lists of the three or four greatest British films ever made.

The basic mythology of British folk horror is totally fictitious in that such clandestine pagan networks never existed, or at least were in no sense survivals from ancient times—the belief that they were derives from a modern academic mythology. Even so, over the past 20 years, folk horror has become a huge academic topic, the subject of countless articles and conferences. Crucially, the genre offers a valuable way of looking at fictional productions from many countries around the world which use a broadly horror-oriented framework to explore the nightmares and fears of their own particular societies.