This book, volume ten in the Horror Studies series from the University of Wales Press, takes an interdisciplinary approach to the currently popular (especially in the UK) genre of folk horror across various media, including fiction, film, television, and video games. The volume grew out of a 2019 conference hosted by Falmouth and Lehigh Universities.
Folk horror as a subgenre of horror became a popular culture phenomenon in the early twenty-first century, but earlier fiction and films are seen as precursors. Folk horror tends to be set in isolated rural communities in which older (often pagan) folk customs have survived. Outsiders coming into the community become the victims of a climactic, violent ritual. In other words, the horror of folk horror derives from a concept of a rural, isolated “folk,” and of folklore as survivals from an earlier (usually threatening) way of life. Although the essays in this volume vary (as with any such volume), the editors seem to be making an effort to expand folk horror studies beyond this anachronistic idea of the folk, and beyond the typically British settings.
The book consists of an introduction and thirteen essays divided into four sections, as well as a bibliography, index, and brief biographies of contributors. Part One, Folk Horror’s Folklore, is the most likely to be of interest to folklorists. Topics include witch trials in sixteenth-century Lancashire and their representation in tourism and popular culture, and an examination of the nationalistic use of folklore in Ukrainian gothic literature. This section also includes two articles written by folklorists, Jeffrey Tolbert and Ian Brodie.
Many scholars who have written about folk horror have not had a background in folklore studies. In his essay “The Frightening Folk,” Tolbert introduces readers to the history of folklore studies and to basic concepts in the contemporary discipline. He does so clearly and succinctly, making the case that folk horror tends to rely on concepts of folk and folklore that are outdated and reductionist, based on nineteenth or early twentieth-century concepts, and that their use often marginalizes groups of people by projecting them into an “imaginary past.” Tolbert also introduces the concept of the folkloresque, as a useful tool for thinking about how the concepts of folk and folklore are constructed in fiction, film, and popular culture. This material will not be new to folklorists but will, hopefully, be of use to non-folklorists studying folk horror.
Ian Brodie’s contribution to this section analyzes the popular children’s cartoon Scooby Doo, identifying such folkloristic phenomena as legend tripping and “false ostension,” while considering common themes between Scooby Doo and folk horror, referencing “the exploration of the Other by the urban middle classes” (87). Brodie’s article is an excellent example of the use of a folkloristic lens in the analysis of popular culture.
Part Two, Re-visioning Canonical Folk Horror, includes an interesting examination by Timothy Jones of the influence of “rejected knowledge” on folk horror, that is, the influence of writers such as Margaret Murray, James Frazer, and Gerald Gardner, whose work is no longer accepted by academics. This part also includes examinations of folk-horror film typography, and of some American works that the author considers to be folk horror (including Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”).
Part Three, Folk Horror in New Places, expands the folk horror canon. It includes articles on the “weird folk horror” of British writer E. F. Benson, and on ways that horror video games can create an eerie sense of loss of agency. Of most interest to this reviewer, however, is Katarzyna Ancuta’s fascinating exploration of phi pops, Thai supernatural beings that are very active in contemporary Thai folklore while also having a large presence in Thai horror films. Ancuta’s essay differs from most others in the volume in relying on contemporary ethnography, and it is an excellent case study in the interaction of folklore and popular culture, though I wonder how much relating her topic to the genre of folk horror really helps her analysis.
The three essays in Part Four, Folk Horror’s Politics, are interesting studies of folk horror in Italian horror films (in which Catholicism tends to be the source of horror rather than paganism), political agendas of film versions of La Llorona, and the use of legends about coal mines in horror films set in Appalachia. Valeria Villegas Lindvall’s essay on La Llorona includes an informative survey of film versions of this legend, before focusing on issues of epistemic racism in the 2019 film The Curse of La Llorona. Villegas Lindval’s analysis is insightful, but would benefit from some knowledge of the folkloristic literature on this topic. Dawn Keetley’s analysis of folk-horror films set in Appalachia has similar issues: her focus on coal mines and similar sites as “sacrifice zones” is interesting and insightful, but her analysis of the use of legends in these films badly needs some reference to the abundant folkloristic literature on legends. To this reviewer, the “legends” described by Keetley seem like good examples of the folkloresque.
Folk horror has emerged as a significant subgenre of horror. The goal of this volume, to expand the geographic and theoretical scope of folk-horror research, is commendable. However, it needs to be acknowledged that folk horror is a limited genre with certain narrowly defined themes and narratives, and that it has been primarily British. It is not simply horror that draws on folklore, though a great deal of the horror genre does that (e.g., much horror draws on supernatural beliefs, on contemporary or historical legends). Folk horror draws on a particular understanding of folklore, an understanding that is at least a century out of date, and makes arguments about modernity and othering that are problematic. This volume is taking steps in the right direction, but folk horror studies need to do more to examine the use of folklore and the folkloresque in folk horror (as Tolbert advocates), use ethnography (as in Ancuta’s essay), place less emphasis on whether the materials under consideration fit a narrow (generally British) model of folk horror, and give more consideration to the problematic depiction of rural folk (and other marginalized groups) in much folk horror.
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[Review length: 1019 words • Review posted on October 28, 2023]