So, throughout the month of October, I’ll be posting works of folk horror-film, TV, fiction-that are off the beaten track.

(Scovell’s 2017 critical study, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange is required reading if you’re interested in folk horror, by the way.) In the second contemporary resurgence of folk horror, there is already what seems like it might be a new US “unholy trinity.” Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) and Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) are already must-see films Midsommar, in particular, is profoundly influenced by the earlier films, especially The Wicker Man.Īs fantastic as these six films are, there is so much more to folk horror.

These canonical films are all eminently worth watching-and they begin with what Adam Scovell called the “unholy trinity”: Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971), and The Wicker Man (Robert Hardy, 1973). As folk horror has steadily become more popular over the course of the last ten years, a canon has emerged –the “must watch” folk horror films.

Calibre movie sammy