(Art is “ Monstrosity #16 / 2019” by boris-markevich.)

Here are some folk horror viewing recommendations for your day.

• From Kieran Fisher for Film School Rejects: “10 Great Folk Horror Movies to Watch By Yourself in a Candle-Lit Woodland Cabin.”
• From William Wright for Alternative Press: “Here Are the Folk Horror Movies Every New Initiate Needs to Watch.”
• From Adam Scovell for the British Film Institute: “10 Great Lesser-Known Folk Horror Films.” 
• From Shane Scott-Travis for Taste of Cinema: “The 10 Best Folk Horror Movies of All Time.” 

Today’s reading recommendation list is from Jo Furniss for Crime Reads: “10 Novels Based on Folk Horror.”

This quote from the article above seems fitting for the spooky season: 

The resurgence of the genre shows that folk horror is apt for our times. Identities are fluid. No bad deed goes unpunished. The civilized world is only a heartbeat away from primal and uncanny threats.

The genre is also nostalgic for a rural England that is as far from Downtown Abbey as you can get in a four-horse carriage. This England is afeared of change. In times of crisis, we return to the old ways, which offer a reassuring connection to a simple past. But at the cost of old evils. There is a sense that all progress is a chimera, that our modern sophistication is itself a form of naivety.

Step into the forest (or the marshes or the moors) and I am no different to my ancestors. Alone. Vulnerable. Insignificant in the presence of something older, deeper, unknowable but unquestionably there. I may glimpse a movement in the trees and wonder if it’s real. Then I realize that of course it’s real; it’s me that is ephemeral. Only I am in doubt.

It is deeply unsettling for modern people to encounter forces out of our control. We believe we control nature itself; fertility, aging, health. We have a choice over where and how we live. Via technology, we have all human knowledge at our fingertips, so we rarely need to wonder. And yet our biggest questions remain stubbornly unanswered. Why do bad things happen? How do I know who to trust? What makes someone evil?

(Art is “Monstrosity #14_1 / 2017” by boris-markevich.)

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