I can’t believe I haven’t done this list before. I guess you need to leave easy topics aside to do them later, so you can sometimes do the low effort stuff. So, here’s some low effort.

Okay, I put about as much effort into this as I usually do with these lists. It’s just that sometimes you have to put it into different places.

What is folk horror? According IMDb…

The folk horror subgenre features themes of rural folklore, pagan beliefs, and the supernatural or uncanny elements associated with rural or isolated settings. Folk horror often explores the clash between ancient, often pre-Christian traditions and modern society, blurring the line between the natural and the supernatural.

I would like to add that this is somewhat western point of view. Of course, there are great folk horror stories from areas and countries where Christianity has never become the majority religion and we should acknowledge their contributions to this genre as well. Granted, being from the west, I am not as aware of those movies as I am with their western counterparts. For example, there’s an Indian folk horror movie called Tumbbad, which is supposedly very good, but I’ve never seen it. Never seem the cult movie Mystics in Bali either.

In general, this is a genre that is kind of a difficult sell to larger audiences, but also allows for various cultures to shine. I mean, I couldn’t even fit more than one English movie on the list, but I did find room for a movie from Estonia and a movie from Finland (and I was even considering another Finnish one as well as one from Sweden).

Anyhow, here’s the list in chronological order (except that I couldn’t be bothered to check for actual release dates when two movies came out in the same year):

Kaidan (1964)

Or Ghost Stories. This is a four part anthology of traditional Japanese horror stories. They have been spread around through cultural osmosis enough that you know what’s going on in each case, but it doesn’t really matter. These are just nicely executed simple stories with classic morals behind them. This might actually be the best anthology ever made.

Onibaba (1964)

The horror elements come in kind of late, as this is mostly just two women trying to adjust to a situation they’ve been put into due to war that has taken most of the men in their community. However, this does conform with some classic folk horror ideas very well: for example the autonomy of women. It doesn’t judge their sexuality, which was probably pretty novel back in 1964.

Sauna (2008)

Ah, a Finnish movie. Actually, there is another Finnish movie from 1952 called The White Reindeer, which I considered as well. This one made it. It revolves around men, who are demarking a new border between Sweden and Russia in what is now Finland. They come across a village not in any maps and have to investigate, but it turns out that the village is linked to one of them. Kind of weird and the titular sauna is nothing I’ve seen anywhere else (and as a Finn, I’ve seen probably hundreds of saunas).

Kill List (2011)

Two professional assasins are asked to kill a list of people. They soon find out that the whole thing is more than what they bargained for, but their mysterious employer refuses to let them go. A conspiracy involving a cult begins to show itself, but nothing seems to be quite as it first seems.

The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015)

You will know this one, but if you don’t for some reason, there’s a family in New-England in the 17th century, that leaves behind their safe colony after a religious dispute. They build a farm, but nothing seems to go their way, so they need to start finding excuses. But since they are featured in the intro, we know that there are witches around in the woods. Robert Eggers has since become one of my favorite directors.

Hagazussa (2017)

Moving backwards in time, we find ourselves in a small Austrian village in the 15th century. A woman lives alone after being branded as a witch. She befriends another woman from the village, but that turns out to be just a cruel joke, which kind of turns the movie into a rape revenge story, but it doesn’t feel like one.

The Wailing (Gokseong) (2016)

This is a South Korean film. A police officer from a small village tries to figure out why his daughter is ill. This involves a shaman among many other approaches, but in the end all this seems useless.

November (2017)

An Estonian film about a peasant, who is in love with a woman, but a local Baltic German nobleman also has his eyes on her and a simple peasant can’t really compete… unless it’s with magic. And the folk magic here is kind of weird, which I love.

Hereditary (2018)

Another movie you should have seen. It’s about a family, who lose a daughter, but it turns out that the daughter had a purpose forced upon her that she wasn’t even aware of, which leads to problems within the family and dark secrets being dug up. Again, a debut from one of my favorite current directors, Ari Aster. I also though about putting Midsommar on the list, but 10 is just 10 and it didn’t quite fit.

The Sudbury Devil (2023)

Kind of the impetus for this list. Since I saw this quite recently, it is possible that I would put some other movie in its place, but for now, here it is. It’s a microbudget movie and at times it shows, but it also has a very believable witch. Of course not like something we would see in real life, but very faithful to various stories by horny puritans of the early modern age.