The Folk Horror genre has become one of the most popular forms of horror in recent years, with the rise of cult and ancestral narratives pervasive throughout all horror films. Folk horror’s best films are known for using elements of folklore, rituals, and ancient traditions to provide the backdrop for the thrilling and horrifying stories told that reveal the darker sides of our nature and humanity. It has become so popular as it mixes the realistic with the spiritually sinister and creates a crossover that has a feel all too real of ‘this could happen to me’.

The most impactful of the folk genre throughout cinema history and into recent years have focused on cults, voodoo, paganism, and superstition. Films like the critically acclaimed Hereditary with surprise endings, which puts a legitimately terrifying, modern spin on the occult, or Midsommar, that brings violent cults and the psychological forces within to the fore. Every film places the onus on the viewer that what they are watching isn’t something too far outside the realm of possibility, and that realization is what makes this genre one of the most fear-inducing horror themes and why the films themselves are so haunting…

• The Blair Witch Project (1999)
• The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971)
• Apostle (2018)
• La Llorona (2019)
• Kill List (2011)
• Midsommar (2019)
• The Wailing (2016)
• The Wicker Man (1973)
• The Witch (2015)
• Hereditary (2018)