Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures analyzes folk horror by looking at its recent popularity in novels and films such as The Witch (2015), and Candyman (2021). Countering traditional views of the genre as depictions of the monstrous, rural, and pagan past trying to consume the present, the contributors to this collection posit folk horror as being able to uniquely capture the anxieties of the twenty-first century, caused by an ongoing pandemic and the divisive populist politics that have arisen around it. Further, this book shows how, through its increasing intersections with other genres such as science fiction, the weird, and eco-criticism as seen in films and texts like The Zero Theorum (2013), The Witcher (2007-21), and Annihilation (2018) as well as through its engagement with topics around climate change, racism, and identity politics, folk horror can point to other ways of being in the world and visions of possible futures.
Simon Bacon is an independent scholar and film critic based in Poznan, Poland.
Section One: Framing the Past to Make the Present Chapter 1: "Buried": Folk Horror as Retrieval Tracy Fahey Part I: The Folklore of British Folk Horror Chapter 2. Secret Powers of Attraction: Folk Horror in its Cultural Context Howard David Ingham Chapter 3. A Battlefield in England: Folk Horror and War Jimmy Packham Chapter 4. Live Horror Theatre, Nostalgia and Folklore David Norris Chapter 5. Frayed Strands Entwined: Considering 21st Century Folk Horror James Rose Part II: America, Settlers, And Belonging Chapter 6. Palimpsests and Other Texts: Christianity and Pre-Modern Religions in Folk Horror Brandon R. Grafius Chapter 7. "There's some weird shit going on in the woods": Landscape, Cults, and Folklore in the Films of Chad Crawford Kinkle and Andy Mitton Paul A. J. Lewis Chapter 8. Fae Fight Back: Monstrous Mycelium and post-Colonial Gothic in The Hallow Kit Hawkins Section Two: Facing Backward Whilst Looking Forward Part III: Cultural Positionings Chapter 9. Early American Colonial Violence and Folk Horror: Wrong Turn, a 21st Century Interpretation Connor McAleese Chapter 10. Wendigo Tales: Climate Gothic and Indigenous Resistance in Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow Lauryn E. Collins Chapter 11. A Locus of the Old and New in Australian Folk Horror Cinema: The Transnational, Transcultural and Transtextual Narratives in The Witches of Blackwood Phil Fitzsimmons Chapter 12. A Multi-contextual Analysis of the Future of Folk Horror in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth Jon R. Meyers Chapter 13. Who Makes the Hood?: The City, Community, and Contemporary Folk Horror in Nia DaCosta's Candyman Kingsley Marshall Part IV: Identity Chapter 14. Non-normativity in Female Centered Folk Horror Literature Stephanie Ellis Chapter 15. (In)Visible Women: Folk Horror in the Spanish Anthology of Fairy Tales Ni Aqui ni en Ningun Otro Lugar (2021) by Patricia Esteban Erles Sandra Garcia Gutierrez Chapter 16. Speculative Folk Horror and Reclaiming Monsters in Cherrie Moraga's The Hungry Woman Danielle Garcia-Karr Chapter 17. "I wish, please, to live": Religion and Rewilding in Michel Faber's Ecohorror Vicky Brewster Part V: Intersections and Futures Chapter 18. "Nigh is the time of Madness and Disdain" Folk Horror in The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Stephen Butler Chapter 19. A Horror Film for Our Times: Annihilation as Weird Folk Eco-Horror M. Keith Booker Chapter 20. Future Shock Folk Horror in Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem" Garrett Castleberry Chapter 21. Folk Horror in Inside No. 9: "Mr King" and Contending Eco-narratives Reece Goodall
Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures is an engaging, ambitious and wide-ranging volume with an impressive line-up of contributors. It should be of interest to anyone interested in contemporary folk horror or in the possibilities contained within its myriad future manifestations. -- Bernice M. Murphy, Trinity College Dublin
