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Biblical Themes Found in Contemporary Folk Horror

Christian themes and biblical imagery contribute greatly to the contemporary horror genre. Whether it’s Catholic exorcists, angels and demons, end-times apocalypse, or visions of Hell, religious themes are replete in today’s horror. Folk horror is no exception.

Folk horror uniquely appeals to specific biblical themes. In this article, I hope to outline some of those theological themes and how they overlap with that contemporary genre.

What is Folk Horror?

The term “folk horror” is relatively new, a phrase that was popularized in the early 2000s. Over at TV Tropes, folk horror is categorized as a subgenre of religious horror.

This subtrope of Religious Horror is less concerned with organized faiths and divine beings as much as it’s concerned with the old folkloric rituals in isolated rural areas. Thus, while it can still focus on a modern religion, it is more likely to focus on the pagan faiths of yore. Demons, cults and goblins haunt the woods while regular people try to survive. Organized religion is most likely corrupt and/or useless, though sadistic clergymen can be the true danger. If you’re lucky, you’ll have one heroic Badass Preacher among the whole lot, but it might not do any good against beings much older than any god we know.

“Pagan faiths” are often a centerpiece of the folk horror genre. The word “pagan” was used by early Christians to describe polytheistic Romans. Much folk horror features various forms of paganism or old world religion, contrasted against contemporary religion. For example, the 1973 classic “The Wicker Man” pits a devout Christian detective against the inhabitants of an island village that has abandoned Christianity for a form of Celtic paganism. Likewise, Robert Egger’s “The Witch” (2015) follows a Puritan family, exiled from religious fellowship, whose rural isolation leads to contact with witchcraft. In both cases, there is a natural dichotomy between Christian monotheism and old world paganism. In this way, folk horror is often juxtaposed against traditional Christian beliefs.

While the Crusades morphed into a purging of paganism from the land, stories of witches and devils inevitably flourished. Practicing pagans were forced into secrecy. Some withdrew into isolated countrysides and forests to ply their occultism without interference. Thus, belief in haunted forests, cursed springs, and sacred groves populated the ancient mythological landscape. For this reason, one of the thematic constants of folk horror is its portrayal of Nature or rural isolation as something to be feared.

Fear of the Wilderness

In his essay on folk horror, Michael Gold distills its essence into a “fear of the wilderness.”

…stories about witches, monsters, and other bizarre phenomena continued in the folklore of the region, as it had all around Europe. Sometimes this expressed itself in a kind of double-belief, or folk belief, like the rural communities in the Alps who dress like monsters to steal away maids as part of a Christmas celebration. Or the fact that many Icelanders go to Church on Sundays and leave gifts for elves the rest of the week. Usually, however, this expresses itself as a kind of fear of the wilderness. Witches, crones, and Baba Yagas are vestiges of a lost Europe, one where magic and connection to nature reigned supreme, one where sacrifices to the Gods were necessary, and sometimes hard to stomach. These stories not only stemmed from cultural memories of the old religion, they also stemmed from the occasional confirmation that deep in the woods there was some community or another that simply never got the memo.

In many ways, urbanization and technological advance have only heightened our fear of the wilderness. As we have become more reliant on technology and modern amenities, Nature has in turn become more alien to us. We are at home in the mall or apartment, but stranger to the field or forest.

As we have become more reliant on technology and modern amenities, Nature has in turn become more alien to us.

In The Harrowing and Hypocritical Humanity of Folk Horror, Peyton Robinson writes, “Nature’s familiarity is rendered eerie and untrusting.” He concludes that folk horror is

…most aptly recognized by its utter isolation. Usually set in a rural location, folk horror is marked by either the dark spiritual power of the land, a community that exists on the fringe — with their isolation breeding a ‘wayward’ set of beliefs, religions, and practices — or both. Nature’s familiarity is rendered eerie and untrusting. It all rests on the terrifying assertion that the familiarity of the land and people who surround you are a grim mystery with dark, damning truths.”

This rendering of Nature as alien and primal is ubiquitous in contemporary folk horror. For example, the 2017 British horror film “The Ritual” follows a group of friends whose trek through the woods of Northern Sweden leads them to a cult which worships an ancient Nordic deity — part animal, part plant, and part human. Similarly, “The Apostle” (2018) features a religious commune that inhabits an isolated island and worships a nature goddess comprised of flesh, rootage, and foliage. In both these cases, the protagonist’s’ journey away from civilization leads them to a collision with some vile offspring of Nature.

In these, and many other cases, the monstrous elements of the plot are but manifestations of the wilderness and isolation. Not only does the wilderness house dark and primal energies, but the Land is seen as a monstrosity all its own.

Likewise, Scripture portrays Man as existing in an uneasy alliance with Nature. Whereas the early chapters of the Bible reveal Creation as “good” (seven times in Genesis 1 God pronounces His creation ‘good’), the Fall of Man (Gen. 3) introduces corruptive elements. Not only does the Land begin to produce “thorns and thistles” (Gen. 3:18), but Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden they were commissioned to occupy.

The entire story of Scripture is that of Man living outside the Garden and pining to return. The Wilderness is alien because we are exiled from Eden.

In this sense, the fear of the wilderness contained in much folk horror can be seen as a broader alienation of Man against Nature. We are exiled from the Garden, refugees from our intended Estate. Not only does Nature produce “thorns and thistles,” corrupting our former home, but we stand cursed outside Her confines.

The Land as Enemy / Adversary

In his article What Can Folk Horror Tell Us About Our Landscape?, Adam Covell writes,

Folk Horror of all types requires some sense of a remythologised landscape. By this I mean that the characters must in some way believe that what they do to the land, for the land or what comes from the land is beyond and above them in some way. Many characters and societies within Folk Horror believe in such power of landscape though usually in a negative, horrific sense. The most famous example of this occurs in The Wicker Man where a man is burnt to death in order to propagate the island’s previously failed apple crops.

Indeed, “The Wicker Man” frames the Land as ‘adversary,’ not in the sense that Mother Nature actively stalks humanity, but that she requires obeisance from us. In the case of that film, the inhabitants of the island shed blood to satiate the Earth’s crops. Human sacrifice as Earth homage is a thematic mainstay in folk horror.

The fear of the wilderness contained in much folk horror can be seen as a broader alienation of Man against Nature. We are exiled from the Garden, refugees from our intended Estate.

For example, Thomas Tryon’s “Harvest Home” (1973), which is widely credited as the inspiration for Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn,” revolves around the corn harvest and innocent outsiders drawn into a rural cult. However, the key to the villagers’ bountiful harvests involve pagan rituals and human sacrifice. “The Hallow,” a 2015 British-Irish co-production filmed in Ireland, includes the tag-line, “Nature has a dark side.” In the article, The Resurgence of Folk Horror, the author suggests that this tagline “is perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of folk horror: Nature is no longer content to be background. Nature has power, agency, in folk horror. It lives, moves, acts, overpowers, destroys.”

When She is not demanding sacrifice, Mother Earth is exacting judgment. As in “Gaia,” a 2021 South African ecological horror film, in which a nature god assimilates humans into the forest, turning them into flowers, fungus, and even trees. In a more aggressive turn, M. Night Shyamalan’s poorly-received “The Happening” (2008) pits Man against Nature, literally. After a series of mass suicides, the protagonists speculate that plant life has developed a defense mechanism against humans causing the release of an airborne toxin which stimulates neurotransmitters and causes humans to kill themselves. Numerous iterations of Nature vs. Humanity can be found in folk horror, causing some to even suggest that, in the genre, we are actually the villains.

Again, the idea of Humanity living in an antagonistic or adversarial relationship with Earth is quite biblical. In Scripture, the Man himself is formed from the Earth (Gen. 2:7). The very first job ever assigned to him was gardening. God placed Adam in Eden and commanded him to “till the earth and keep it” (Gen 2:15). Furthermore, the Lord commanded Man to steward and rule over creation.

And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:28 ESV)

However, the Fall of Man disrupted his relationship to Earth. Not only is the ground “cursed” (Gen. 3:17) because of him, but “thorns and thistles” (Gen. 3:18) emerge, choking out ecological tranquility. Sin created a rift between Humans and the Planet.

The Bible often describes this fractured relationship between Humanity and Creation in stark terms. For example, God commanded His people to resist the pagan practices of the surrounding nations lest they “defile the land.”

Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices, for by all these things the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves. Even the land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants.

But you are to keep My statutes and ordinances, and you must not commit any of these abominations—neither your native-born nor the foreigner who lives among you. For the men who were in the land before you committed all these abominations, and the land has become defiled. So if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it spewed out the nations before you. (Lev. 18: 24-28 NIV)

So according to Scripture, not only can certain human actions defile the land, but the land can wage retribution (“it will vomit you out”). Things like ecological disaster, war, and bloodshed can be seen as desecration of the Land. After Cain murdered his brother, God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10).

Likewise, much folk horror taps into our uneasy relationship with Creation. The ground has been “cursed” because of our sins, whether it be through ecological disregard or spiritual defilement. Just as Abel’s blood cried out from the soil, so our sins find us out. Folk horror often taps into our uneasy symbiosis between the Earth we were formed from and our delinquent stewardship.

Deifying Nature

In The Resurgence of Folk Horror, Dawn Keetly notes how the genre often frames the Earth as a sentient being full of “lively forces at work around and within us.”

While the most overt source of conflict in folk horror is religious—between Christianity and paganism—I think that the less overt yet actually much more important conflict involves humans and their natural environment. In folk horror, things don’t just happen in a (passive) landscape; things happen because of the landscape. The landscape does things; it has efficacy. Jane Bennett (a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University) puts this idea beautifully, describing the long tradition of philosophical materialism in the West, in which “fleshy, vegetal, mineral materials are encountered not as passive stuff awaiting animation by human or divine power, but as lively forces at work around and within us.” Folk horror is about these “lively forces”—the “fleshly, vegetal, mineral”—in their most threatening incarnations.

Whereas Scripture describes God as being separate from Nature, paganism often equates Nature with God. Though not folk horror, James Cameron’s “Avatar” is often considered an ode to pantheism. Ross Douthat, in his NY Times’ article Heaven and Nature, described the 2009 blockbuster film as “Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism, a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.”

Paganism and pantheism share many of the same ideological and religious spaces, which is one reason why folk horror often embraces a more pantheistic view of Nature. In their review of “Gaia,” the folks at Grimoire of Horror summarize the film this way: God is Real, and She’s a Fungus. Another example could be Ben Wheatley’s “In the Earth” (2021). The story focuses upon ecological researchers who learn of the legend of Parnag Fegg, the Spirit of the Woods, a nature spirit who is influencing the team and using the environment to communicate with them.

Part of the religious tension that occurs in folk horror is between the “old gods” and the one true God, Christianity and paganism, the God who made Creation vs. the god who is Creation.

Jewish commentator Dennis Prager writes

Indeed, of all the false gods, nature is probably the most natural for people to worship. Every religion before the Bible had nature-gods — the sun, the moon, the sea, gods of fertility, gods of rain and so on.

Whereas the Bible commissions us to steward the Land, it forbids us from deifying it. Indeed, one of the traits of the pagan world was its elevation of Earth to the level of godhood. Rather than just cultivating trees and using them for beauty or utility, some reverenced them, bequeathing upon the Land consciousness and cognizance. In fact, panpsychism – the theory that everything has consciousness – is undergoing a surprising renaissance, even in academic and professional circles. Nevertheless, Scripture is clear that worshipping and serving “the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25) is the most reprehensible of all sins.

Which is why the Bible commands us neither to denigrate nature nor deify it.

This also explains why much of the religious tension that occurs in folk horror is between the “old gods” and the one true God, Christianity and paganism, the God who made Creation vs. the god who is Creation.

It’s also why the original “Wicker Man” is typically viewed as a classic in the genre. One reason for this is the continued rise of paganism. The original film took painstaking care to research and represent ancient pagan practices and rites, including the burning of the Wicker Man effigy at the film’s climax. But whereas paganism was once considered archaic and in decline, a vestige of primitive man’s ignorance and fear, (which made the thriving pagan cult in the original film such an anomaly), it has recently resurfaced with striking vigor. (See my article on the rise of Pandemic Paganism and the exponential growth of witchcraft, Wicca, and occultism.)

But another one of the original film’s strength is in its portrayal of the antithetical nature of paganism and Christianity. This is a very important point. Pluralism has forced us into the position of drawing less distinctions between religions. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for people to see once incompatible religions (such as Christianity and paganism) as part of some vast mythological umbrella. Christianity is just one of many ways to god, people regurgitate without thought. In this sense, the film does a number of things that is rather difficult to pull off nowadays — it portrays a distinct difference between paganism and Christianity. A distinction, in fact, that has deadly consequences for one of the parties. Not only does The Wicker Man serve as a warning against spiritual naivete and complacency, it illustrates the stark, very real differences between world religions.

Conclusion

While the genre of contemporary folk horror continues to morph, certain thematic elements clearly intersect with elements of biblical theology. The clash of the old gods and the one true God, paganism and Christianity, are intrinsic to folk horror. Films as disparate as “The Exorcist” (1973) and “The Conjuring” (2013) pit ancient evils against modern Christians. This clash of powers and worldviews is central to the genre, and a reminder of the stark differences between the pagan and the Christian mindset.

The Bible says that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Rom. 8:22-23 NIV) awaiting the culmination of God’s redemptive. Sin has so tainted the Land that it must be redeemed. While much of folk horror encapsulates the alienation of Man against Nature, it sometimes elevates Nature to the level of deity. Whereas God may curse someone’s crops because of sin or judgment (Deuteronomy 28:17-66), satiating the Earth with blood or worship are categorically forbidden.

Likewise, pantheism, the worldview most espoused by paganism, is fundamentally flawed. It’s why this Catholic writer describes Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” (2019) as a cautionary tale about

how a primarily pantheistic outlook reduces rational human beings to just another cog in the recycling of mother nature. Human reason, will, and nuanced emotions naturally resist at the idea of being only meat…

If humans are simply “another cog in the recycling of mother nature,” then Morals and Absolutes are “red in tooth and claw,” just like the elements they arise from. However, Scripture teaches that Humans are the crown of Creation. We have been commissioned to steward the earth and worship the God who made it. As G.K. Chesterton put it, “The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.”

Sadly, much folk horror simply reduces Man to earth, while elevating earth to Deity.

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