Written by contributor Sophia Mattice
There’s nothing like a summer festival. Blue skies, green grass, flower crowns, dancing—just add some ritualistic bloodletting and occult leanings and you truly have some hashtags to one-up those vacation posts on Instagram.
If you’re Ari Aster, that is.
The writer and director of last year’s popular and divisive family-based horror film Hereditary returns with what looks like an intriguingly twisted addition to folk horror, Midsommar scheduled to premiere in theaters July 3. Two trailers have dropped thus far and the information they give us isn’t much, but what is there is tantalisingly creepy. A couple whose relationship is on the rocks, Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Raynor) decide on a vacation to rural Sweden for a festival that happens once every 90 years. With friends Mark (William Jackson Harper) and Josh (Will Poulter) accompanying them, there’s already a palpable tension among the group, an undefined personal tragedy having just happened to Dani before their departure.
Whereas Hereditary was a horror drama that laced its narrative through dark spaces and darker family secrets, Midsommar seems delicately and deviously woven with the characteristics of folk horror. The sub-genre is not strictly defined, but it tends to lean toward old European traditions and pagan influences, with the natural world playing a central role. One could proffer that it’s the subversion of our comfortable, modern perception of nature as a fecund nurturer that grounds us in oneness with all living things.
Case in point, the village in Midsommar looks like just the sort of halcyon hamlet designed to alleviate woes. Verdant and filled with friendly-looking locals that like to bust a move or two around a garlanded maypole, on the surface it’s a place that should promote a sense of tranquillity and belonging. The more we watch the trailers we realise it’s anything but those things. Beneath the sunny, illuminated exterior is a current of dread leading toward a terrifying conclusion.
Before we get there though, let’s look at some of the films in folk horror that are proper examples in their own right. Below are my top five picks for favourite folk horror movies; you can see my complete top 10 list on the Stardust app at MovieswithPhia.
1. The Wicker Man (1973)
What else were you expecting? Considered one of the “unholy trinity” of folk horror, along with The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Witchfinder General (1968), The Wicker Man is akin to the fictional Fyre Festival of its day, with all of the deception and some May Day nudity thrown in to boot. Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) arrives on the small Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate reports of a missing girl. A conservative Christian, the policeman observes the residents’ frolicsome sexual displays and pagan rituals with suspicion, especially since none of them seem concerned, or will even acknowledge, that a local child is gone. For all its ritualistic trappings, the scariest thing about The Wicker Man is the people’s belief systems. Sgt. Howie, in the certainty of his faith, can’t conceive of another way of being, so he’s blind to the danger around him. The people of Summerisle, despite their veneer of sensuality and blitheness, are fundamentalists willing to hurt others as long as it enables them to continue on in their bohemian status quo.
2. Onibaba (1964)
If you guessed from the title that this movie is set nowhere near Europe, you’re not wrong. Onibaba is actually labelled a historical horror drama by most film buffs, but hear me out. Kaneto Shindo’s tale of two peasant women in 14th century Japan that murder samurai in order to sell their possessions pulses with the hallmarks of folk horror. Tall grass and reeds next to a lake seemingly depict an idyllic natural setting that is actually claustrophobic and mysterious in what it conceals, and religious superstition is used to suppress and control when one of the women starts to fear that the return of a male neighbour from war will cause her daughter-in-law to leave her. Not jump-out-of-your seat scary, but a nuanced, layered look at the powerful, sometimes frightening urges inspired by desire and reflected back at us through the indifference of nature.
3. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)
Some purists might be upset that this doesn’t rank higher on the list (to really get their dander up, Witchfinder General doesn’t event crack my top five), but they can always create their own compendium of folk horror. Meanwhile, let’s talk about this entertaining, temperamental scare-fest. Directed by Piers Haggard, The Blood on Satan’s Claw tells the story of teenagers turned demon-worshippers in 17th-century Cornwall after a plowboy accidentally exposes the strange remains of an inhuman creature. Despite the melodramatic title, there’s not a lot of camp here, mostly thanks to the acting, particularly a smouldering performance by Linda Hayden as Angel Blake, self-appointed leader of this band of children gone bad. If Hayden were a young actress now you can bet she’d have a strong social media following that was well deserved.
Trigger warning: There is a rape scene.
4. Apostle (2018)
While Gareth Evan’s movie owes plenty to The Wicker Man, it is its own potent concoction of terror and brutality. Apostle doesn’t delve into characterisation as deep as it thinks it does, but the atmosphere, cinematography and performances keep your attention. In the early 1900s, former missionary Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) returns home to rescue his sister, who is being held for ransom by a religious cult lead by Malcolm Howe (Michael Sheen). Thomas travels undercover to the pleasant-looking island where the cult lives, soon learning that the group’s religious devotion to an ancient nature goddess is bastardised by the same vice Malcolm and his inner-circle claim to reject. There’s an underlying theme of people’s hypocrisy toward nature, in that we tend to revere it as long as it’s bountifully beautiful and able to be controlled.
5. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Love it or hate it, this found footage mock-doc directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez created its own supernatural legend with the woods of Maryland serving as the omnipresent backdrop. If you don’t know the story of three film students who come to inexplicable, violent ends after becoming lost in the forest while making a documentary about the folkloric Blair Witch, then just go watch it right now. With roots in European folk horror, its Americana influence turns The Blair Witch Project into a tale told around a campfire, a story that has worked its way so deeply into popular subconscious that many people thought it was based on real events. The lore is branching out into an Xbox video game, slated for release on August 30. It’s safe to say that for better or worse, this story is here to stay.
