10 Folk Horror Movies That Are Bangers From Start to Finish

No jump scares. No haunted houses. No final girls with butcher knives. Folk horror taps into something older, stranger, and more elemental; fears rooted in soil, seasons, and ritual. These are stories where the landscape itself seems to whisper, where religion curdles into zealotry, and where death wears the face of tradition.

The ten films on this list don’t just build dread, they carry it like a funeral procession. Every frame is laced with tension, and the payoffs are as brutal as they are unforgettable. They’re hypnotic, unsettling, and frequently bonkers.

10

‘A Field in England’ (2013)

Directed by Ben Wheatley

“Open up and let the devil in.” Shot in stark black-and-white and laced with surrealism, A Field in England is folk horror as psychological collapse. During the English Civil War, a group of deserters, driven by fear, hunger, and hallucinogens, cross a seemingly empty field. What they find instead is a trap woven from alchemy, madness, and something unnameable beneath the soil. It’s part stage play, part fever dream, part occult chamber piece.

Director Ben Wheatley takes his time uncoiling the horror, but the tension never drops. Hidden treasure, cryptic symbols, time loops, psychedelic imagery, and sonic assaults push the viewer into the same disoriented state as the characters. The dialogue is killer too, both period accurate and sharply entertaining. Overall, the cast and crew deserve props for creating something so unique and mystifying on such a small budget and with such a lean runtime (it’s just 91 minutes).

9

‘The Ritual’ (2017)

Directed by David Bruckner

“We should have gone to Vegas.” Four friends (played by Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, and Sam Troughton) hiking through a Scandinavian forest stumble into grief, guilt, and an ancient Norse nightmare. The Ritual starts like a buddy drama and quickly devolves into something far colder and more primal. Twisted effigies hang from trees. A gutted elk is left splayed in a cabin. And somewhere in the woods, something watches. The monster reveal is one of the best in modern horror, but it’s the emotional rot that makes this movie stick.

What elevates The Ritual is how it treats trauma as part of the terrain. The forest doesn’t just punish. It mirrors. It drags the characters into their worst memories and dares them to survive. The dread builds slowly, organically, like moss creeping over a tombstone, culminating in a final act that’s full-on Lovecraftian spectacle. Brutal, bold, and arguably underrated.

8

‘Witchhammer’ (1970)

Directed by Otakar Vávra

“I was born with a mole beneath my shoulder blade.” Less well known than some of its peers, Witchhammer is nonetheless a brutal cornerstone of folk horror. Based on historical records of 17th-century Czech witch trials, the film charts the rise of an inquisitor who uses religion as a weapon to consolidate power. Women are accused, tortured, and condemned with chilling regularity, all in the name of piety. It’s not supernatural. It’s scarier than that, because it’s real.

Shot with stark realism and icy detachment, Witchhammer offers no escape into fantasy. It’s a slow-motion nightmare of institutional cruelty, where fanaticism spreads like fire and no one is safe from accusation. The horror here isn’t in monsters or magic; it’s in the machinery of fear, and the ease with which faith can be turned into violence. A bleak, blistering watch that contains to be in relevant in our era of social media mobs and drummed up anger.

7

‘Kill List’ (2011)

Directed by Ben Wheatley

“Thank you.” Ben Wheatley strikes again. At first glance, Kill List doesn’t look like folk horror at all. It opens like a bleak, grounded drama about two former soldiers (Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley) turned contract killers. They argue about money. They eat bad pasta. They’re haunted by things they won’t say out loud. But job by job, the unease thickens. Something’s not right. The targets seem preordained. The killings get weirder. By the time they’re out in the woods, it’s clear this isn’t a thriller but a ritual.

What makes Kill List terrifying is how subtly it transforms into something mythic and monstrous. Wheatley masterfully ramps up the horror without changing gears, so the transition from kitchen-sink realism to cultic nightmare feels disturbingly natural. The final act, with its wordless procession and gut-punch finale, is truly horrifying. Here, the director channels Lovecraft, Kubrick, The Blair Witch Project, and Get Carter. It’s a unique mix, but one he pulls off.

6

‘The Blood on Satan’s Claw’ (1971)

Directed by Piers Haggard

“Look! See what you have done! He was my lover, and you have murdered him!” Few films so perfectly capture the pastoral rot at the heart of folk horror as The Blood on Satan’s Claw (even fewer have titles as metal). When a disfigured skull is unearthed in a plowed field, strange things start to happen. Teenagers speak in riddles, develop patches of hair on their bodies, and hold midnight rituals in the woods. Is it Satan? Something older?

In many ways, this movie laid the foundation for modern folk horror’s obsession with corrupted innocence. The strength of Satan’s Claw is how quietly it curdles its world. What begins as a sleepy period drama slowly deforms into something pagan and perverse. The adults are powerless, the church is ineffectual, and nature itself seems complicit. An atmosphere of decay spreads from frame to frame. In terms of the performances, Linda Hayden is unforgettable as Angel, the ringleader of a child cult, equal parts alluring and terrifying.

5

‘Witchfinder General’ (1968)

Directed by Michael Reeves

“You will say you have confessed. You will swear it. Or I will take you back to Lavenham and have you tortured.” Set during the English Civil War, Witchfinder General is another portrait of cruelty given a badge and license. Vincent Price, usually theatrical, turns in a chillingly restrained performance as Matthew Hopkins, a man who uses superstition and political chaos to terrorize the countryside. There are no demons in this story. Just men, and that’s enough.

This is folk horror at its most political. Director Michael Reeves focuses not on the supernatural, but on how fear is weaponized. The horror comes from the impassive faces of the villagers, the screams behind stone walls, the slow grind of authority crushing anyone it wants. More tragedy than thriller, Witchfinder General ends not with triumph or closure, but with psychological ruin. It’s not a tale of witches. It’s a tale of what men become when they get to burn them.

4

‘Häxan’ (1922)

Directed by Benjamin Christensen

“The devil is everywhere.” Häxan is many things: a documentary, a fantasy, a condemnation, a dream. Made in 1922 and structured like a lecture, the film begins by showing old engravings of witches, tools of torture, and demonic rituals. But it doesn’t stay didactic for long. Soon, we’re in shadowy cabins watching midnight sabbaths, nuns writhing in ecstatic possession, and devils with lolling tongues peering from behind cloaks of smoke. Everything pulses with danger and defiance.

Sure, much of the movie is naturally dated now, but many of the visuals remain striking, and the message is still urgent. The film’s most radical move comes in its final reel, where Benjamin Christensen compares witch hysteria to the treatment of mentally ill women in the early 20th century. Ultimately, Häxan rises above most entries in this subgenre because it doesn’t just depict the horrors of the past; it dares to interrogate the horrors of its own time (and maybe ours).

3

‘The Witch’ (2015)

Directed by Robert Eggers

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” The Witch is a masterclass in atmospheric dread and one of the most remarkable horror debuts of all time. In 1630s New England, a family of Puritan settlers is banished from their community and forced to live on the edge of a dark forest. When their infant son vanishes, tensions turn inward. Suspicion brews. Faith falters. And something in the woods—something old and watching—waits. It’s not just about witches. It’s about what happens when belief collapses and nothing’s left to cling to.

The language is period-accurate, the performances eerily natural, the cinematography grimly gorgeous, and the direction suffocatingly precise. This is folk horror at its most austere, most agonizing, and most subtle. The Witch doesn’t explain its horrors. It lets them bleed into the family’s psyche, and into ours. It all leads up to a fantastic final scene and one of the most memorable closing shots in modern horror.

2

‘Midsommar’ (2019)

Directed by Ari Aster

“I can see your pain. I see it and it is mine now.” On paper, Midsommar sounds almost silly: a group of American students visit a Swedish commune during its once-in-a-lifetime summer festival, only to find themselves entangled in ritual sacrifice. But in execution, it’s anything but. Ari Aster transforms grief, gaslighting, and cultural dislocation into a kaleidoscope of terror, where the horror unfolds not in darkness, but in blinding daylight. He takes the fundamentals of folk horror and makes them glitter anew.

The result is one of the most beautiful horror films ever made, as well as one of the most devastating. Midsommar is hypnotic, horrifying, and heartbreakingly cathartic. You don’t walk away from it. You stumble, reeling. Much of this is thanks to Florence Pugh. She delivers a towering performance as Dani, a woman unraveling after the loss of her family. Her pain is the film’s core, and the cult’s warmth becomes both balm and poison​​​​​​.

1

‘The Wicker Man’ (1973)

Directed by Robin Hardy

“Come. It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man.” Only one movie was ever going to claim the top spot on this list. The granddaddy of folk horror, The Wicker Man still burns bright over 50 years later. When Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward), a devout Christian policeman, arrives on a remote Scottish island to investigate a missing girl, he finds a pagan community thriving in secrecy. They sing. They dance. They smile a little too wide. And they have no intention of letting him leave.

The film works because it leans into ambiguity. Howie’s downfall isn’t just due to the villagers’ deception, but to his own certainty. Likewise, the contrast between Christian repression and pagan liberation is never easy or clear-cut. The horror is not only what happens to him, but how right it seems to everyone else. The Wicker Man ends in flames, but the unease lingers long after the smoke clears.

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