Folk horror movies: a 1970 name for films made since 1922

Folk horror is horror that draws on folklore. It is usually set in the countryside, among people cut off from everyone else, and the fear comes from what that community believes and what it will do about it. The threat is often the neighbors, more than a monster.

The name is newer than the films. It was used for a film in 1970, in a review of The Blood on Satan's Claw, and it spread after Mark Gatiss, an actor and writer, used it in his 2010 BBC series A History of Horror. Gatiss and others group three British films as the "Unholy Trinity" of the genre: Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw and The Wicker Man (1973).

The genre keeps coming back. Critics credit The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019) with renewing interest, and Ari Aster, who directed Midsommar, has called it a contribution to folk horror. Relay has 8 films in this tradition, listed below in release order, from a silent film about witch trials in 1922 to a river horror released in 2026.

What makes a folk horror film

• A place that shapes its people. The writer Adam Scovell, who wrote about the genre for the British Film Institute, puts landscape first: a field, a forest or a river that decides how the people living there think.
• Isolation. The community is cut off from outside help, so nobody can check what its members say.
• A belief the outsider does not share. One scholar, Keetley, argues the central monster is a tribe bound by shared beliefs, not a single villain.
• A climax. The story usually ends in a violent or sacrificial event that the belief has been building toward.

8 folk horror movies to watch

The Witch (1922)

Benjamin Christensen, a Danish director, made this Swedish silent film, known as Häxan, as a lecture on witchcraft that turns into staged scenes from medieval witch trials. It is not the 2015 film of the same name. Christensen drew on the Malleus Maleficarum, a 1486 guide to hunting witches written by two German Inquisitors, and shot mostly at night in a Danish studio to get a dark look.

It cost between 1.5 and 2 million Swedish kronor, probably making it the most expensive silent film made in Scandinavia. Censors in Germany, France and the US objected to its torture, nudity and attacks on the church, and it was banned in many places for years. In 1968 it came back re-edited as Witchcraft Through the Ages, narrated by the writer William S. Burroughs. Critics link it to later witchcraft films, including Witchfinder General.

Documentary

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Ouanga (1936)

George Terwilliger, a silent-era director, wrote and directed this film about Klili, a plantation owner and voodoo priestess who seeks revenge after the white planter she loves rejects her. Fredi Washington, a Broadway star who had played Peola in Imitation of Life (1934), plays her. Folk horror is usually told about the European countryside, but the ingredients are here: an island plantation, a community with its own rules and a belief that outsiders cannot dismiss.

The crew meant to shoot in Haiti, ran into trouble and moved to Jamaica. The film is often called the second zombie film, after White Zombie. UCLA's film archive restored it in 2015 from a shortened reissue print, and critics note that it leans on racial stereotypes and portrays voodoo practitioners as primitive.

Horror

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Woman Who Came Back (1945)

Walter Colmes directed this Republic Pictures film, shot at Chaplin Studios in April 1945 under the working title The Web. Lorna Webster, played by Nancy Kelly, returns to the Massachusetts town of Eben Rock. After a bus crash she becomes convinced that the spirit of a witch who lived three centuries earlier has passed into her.

Lorna descends from a judge who burned women as witches, and the townspeople blame her for a child's illness and drive her out. The judge's diary then shows the old witch hunt rested on a false, forced confession. A reviewer finds the script weak but says it tries for a subtle blend of supernatural and psychological horror. A new 4K restoration from the original negative was made in 2023 and released on Blu-ray in 2024.

Horror

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Witchfinder General (1968)

Michael Reeves, an English director who died nine months after the film came out, made this account of Matthew Hopkins, a real witch hunter who called himself Witch-Finder General in eastern England during the Civil War. Vincent Price, the horror star, plays him. It cost less than £100,000, and Reeves reportedly told Price, "I didn't want you, and I still don't want you, but I'm stuck with you."

British censors called an early script "a study in sadism" and trimmed the film by a couple of minutes at most, far less than the rumors that circulated for years. In the US it was retitled The Conqueror Worm, with Price reading an Edgar Allan Poe poem to tie it to the studio's Poe series. Total Film ranked it 15th among the greatest horror films in 2005, though one writer argues it fits folk horror poorly, because its horror comes from law and order rather than folk belief.

Drama

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Brackenmore (2016)

Kate Reynolds, a Londoner played by Sophie Hopkins, inherits a house from an uncle she never knew in the isolated Irish village of Brackenmore. After a village celebration, masked figures surround the house and she is attacked. Reviewers compare it to The Wicker Man and call it a pagan or occult horror.

Chris Kemble and J.P. Davidson directed it, and it was shot on location in the south of Ireland. It runs about 72 minutes and relies on atmosphere over budget. Reviewers say it is slowly paced and waits until the end to turn truly horrifying.

Horror

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The Forbidden Lands (2025)

Mattia De Pascali wrote and directed this film, set in a poor village in southern Italy. After mysterious deaths in the woods, the villagers blame a young woman as a witch, and two strangers who claim to speak for the Lord are welcomed as saviors. One review says it was shot in the Salento region of Apulia.

It premiered in Galatina in October 2025 and later won an Honorable Mention at the Washington Underground Film Festival. One review says De Pascali draws on the Italian horror director Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling and on Sud e magia, a study of magic in southern Italy by the ethnographer Ernesto De Martino. Reviews call it handmade and uneven, with a time period that is hard to place and a strong sense of local folklore.

Horror

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Pelverata (2025)

Mark Lipkin, an Australian independent filmmaker, directed this low-budget film set in the Tasmanian forest. Two surveyors, Misha and Myaree, face eerie disturbances. Misha's mind frays, and Myaree hears echoes of a brutal past. Lipkin describes it as an eco-folk thriller and horror about the lasting impact of historic genocide on the landscape.

Pelverata is a real locality in Tasmania, and a review notes that Aboriginal communities lived there before colonial settlers forced them out. The critic Anton Bitel writes that the film finds its sense of place through "disorienting reverberations of past trauma." Reviews call it slow but atmospheric.

Thriller

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Wild Swimmers (2026)

Ric Rawlins, a former music journalist, wrote and directed this film, set on the River Avon in England. When swimmers vanish from the river, a trainee journalist named Deji, played by Valerie Kwok, investigates and finds an ancient vampire waiting downstream.

A review lists its folk horror elements as an ancient presence said to lurk in the river for centuries, local rumors about deaths on an isolated stretch of water and a witch-like scarecrow. It adds dread in bright countryside that the reviewer compares to Midsommar. Reviews call the film uneven but atmospheric, more eerie than frightening, with a strong lead performance.

Horror

Where to go next

• For another film from the early days of cinema, see Silent films that survived from a mostly lost era.
• For more horror made far from the studios, see Horror movies of the eighties with stranger backstories than plots.