What makes a film folk horror?
Three tenets survive our arguments
Place
The place matters.
The landscape, village, estate, island, forest or house should do more than sit there looking atmospheric. It should shape the people and the story, carry some sense of history or memory, and make us wonder whether the film could survive being moved somewhere else.
Belief
Belief has consequences.
Folklore, religion, superstition, ritual or inherited tradition matters because people act on it. For us, belief starts to become folk horror when people organise their lives, rituals or violence around it. The gods can be imaginary. The consequences rarely are.
Outsiders
Someone does not know the rules.
A person enters, encounters or becomes trapped inside a place, community or system they do not fully understand. They do not even have to come from somewhere else. Sometimes the most dangerous outsider is the person who thought they already belonged.