I may be a wuss but I love folk horror

Anyone who knows me would say how much of a wussy wuss pants I am. I hate gore, can’t stand tension, and still have nightmares. Things that have only gotten worse as I’ve aged. (Hands up if you too get stress induced nightmares? Fun, eh?)

Yet, I still love folk horror. 

In fact, I only found out my likes - ominous forests, dark fairytales, ancient rituals, witches and magic - were folk horror a few months ago. I don’t know if its because I’m Scottish and so much of our culture is *dark*, or if I truly am that delulu. 

I’ve always had an interest in magic and macabre, and used to insist on watching Labyrinth as a toddler and young child only to end up crying, but hilariously, I stumbled across folk horror on BookTok (the book/reader/author side of TikTok for the uninitiated). I initially thought it wasn’t for me as it had, cause it had horror in the name. Turns out I was wrong (which is a big thing for a Taurus like me to admit). 

The horror part of folk horror is the most mutable bit, it can be turned down to low level ambient dread or amped up to baby-eating girl hangs (IYKYK). I think that’s how I can stomach it - metaphorically or otherwise - because the horror is secondary. The imagery and iconography are what's important and my millennial, art history graduate brain drinks this up like fine wine. 

In folk horror the setting is key, and some could argue the most important part. It’s often isolated and full of foreboding. This could be a dark forest, a remote farm, an overly-jolly Scottish island, either way we want to see the modern and metropolitan played against the ancient and rural. 

One of my favourite books that demonstrates this is Silver in the Wood. It’s the first part in a duology of novellas, and while it is actually historical fiction which slips effortlessly from Victorian to Early Modern to time immemorial, it manages to show the difference between ancient and unknowable nature and contemporary life. I think Emily Tesh was very clever to use Victorian England as a vessel for today, as it's where all contemporary life began. We would not live in today’s world without Victorian ideas of capitalism (and by extension the British Empire), which makes people want to run back to this hallowed time before the free market took over. There are few generations so shaken by late stage capitalism than a millennial. (I would recommend reading this alongside its follow up Drowned Country, as they read more like two parts of the same book, and you get a romantic payoff.)

I like how the interest or focus of the author can come through in folk horror, as it’s is so rarely about the horror itself. Can it be gruesome? Sure. But like a lot of genre media - be it books, films or television - folk horror can be used to analyse our lives, fears and limitations. I recently read Butcher of the Forest, and while it used a lot of the tropes we would associate with folk horror - a quest through an evil and dangerous landscape, the feeling of being watched, snatched children and unearthly creatures that our protagonist has to battle or outsmart - it played with ideas of motherhood and femininity. The protagonist here is Veris, a forty-something single woman, who is tasked with retrieving the children of the tyrannical conqueror who now runs her country. 

It’s another novella, so moves at a fair clip but makes us question how it is to be a mother, and what happens when we fail at what society regards as life’s most important job*. It’s wonderful to see a character grapple with her history of womanhood and all the darkness that can entail, I won’t give too much away as spoilers. It’s illuminating watching Veris battle with herself whilst being forced to do the right thing. It’s a short but complex look at how ideas of motherhood have invaded what it is to be a woman. 

*I don’t think parenting is necessarily the most important job, but it does seem very, very difficult, so kudos to all those who do it. 

I love how folk horror can connect us to our roots and show that our fears are as old as the stories themselves, thus proving they can be overcome. Plus, it’s fun to watch a virgin burn in a big wicker statue, no?