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There are 3 films that are considered the ‘unholy trinity’ of folk horror movies, The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan’s Claw, & The Witchfinder General. All three come from that cynical decade the 1970s and all three are British in origin. Now, folk horror with its rural settings, ancient practices, and disquieting people can be found around the globe. Estonia’s November from 2017 remains one of my favorites, but what of American, and by that I do mean specifically United States, folk horror.

There are those who would count Eggers’ The Witch as folk horror but that feels like a misclassification to me. That movie is as writer/director Eggers described it a Puritan nightmare. Others classify the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as folk horror but while its isolated rural setting fits, one deranged family of cannibals do not a culture make and for me folk horror is always about cultures and the clash of outsider to an isolated culture.

1992’s Candyman get closer with its inner-city culture that is decidedly alien to the pretty, blonde, protagonist but it strikes me as more of a ghost story than a folk horror. Vengeful ghosts are great stories but in my eyes they are not ‘folk.’

Isolated communities living by practices forgotten by the wider world in America would seem to point to with Appalachian Mountain towns in the deep recesses of the that rugged terrain or somewhere in the vast American West where so many communities became ghost towns as their fortunes evaporated.

And yet as my mind twists and turns at the germination of an idea for a novel of American Folk horror it is neither the hillbillies nor the cowboys that is drawing my attention and inspiration but rather the hippies of the 1960s.

Counter-culture is simply another culture one that, to an extent, fetishized the idea of abandoning modernity and returning to nature. An isolated commune, 60 years separated from the rushing madness of modern American life feels like a perfect fit for folk horror. What starts are a collective rejecting modernization and mechanization can grow and transform into a unique and alien culture with its own ideas of what is proper to worship.

This is the direct I think I want to go but I need to make up my mind is the horror metaphysical or is it entirely a matter of practice and belief?