Folk Horror’s Founding Films: Why The Wicker Man & Midsommar Still Define the Genre

The moment Sergeant Howie steps off the boat onto Summerisle, you know something is wrong. The sun is bright. The people are smiling. Everything looks like a postcard. And yet there’s a dread that settles into your chest that doesn’t leave until the credits roll.

This is the genius of folk horror. It doesn’t rely on jump scares or monsters hiding in shadows. It builds its terror from something much deeper: the clash between belief systems, the power of community loyalty, and the question of whether an outsider can ever truly belong. The Wicker Man (1973) didn’t just pioneer this genre. It created a template that still defines how we understand horror rooted in real spiritual tradition, a template that Midsommar (2019) didn’t just follow. It perfected.

If you’re going to understand modern horror, you need to understand these two films and what they’re actually saying about belief, belonging, and the cost of community.

The Birth of Folk Horror: Why The Wicker Man Changed Everything

When Christopher Lee took on the role of Lord Summerisle, he did something that surprised everyone who knew his work. He refused payment. Lee had spent decades playing Dracula, the typecast villain, the dark force. Here was a chance to step into something completely different. A leader of a community. A man whose beliefs are not evil, just different.

That choice matters. Because The Wicker Man isn’t about good versus evil in any simple sense. It’s about two incompatible worldviews colliding on an isolated Scottish island.

Sergeant Howie arrives as a Christian police officer investigating the disappearance of a girl named Rowan. Everywhere he goes, the islanders give him contradictory answers. Some deny she ever existed. Others claim she’s dead. The frustration builds in real time, not just for Howie, but for you watching. You want answers. You want clarity. You get neither.

Instead, what you get is atmosphere. Symbolism woven so carefully into every frame that you could watch this film ten times and still catch details you missed. The Green Man Inn, named for the god of the forest and the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Apples throughout every scene, connecting to the Isle of Avalon in Arthurian legend. The maypole with its endless song about death and regeneration. These aren’t accidents. They’re the scaffolding holding up the entire film’s argument about what happens when a culture is truly committed to its own survival, no matter the cost.

By the time Howie discovers what the islanders actually want from him, what role he’s been chosen to play, it’s too late. The community has decided. And unlike modern society, where the individual has rights and protections, this island operates on a completely different code. Community need supersedes personal autonomy. Belief supersedes law.

The film asks a question it never answers: who’s actually right here? The Christian sergeant clinging to his faith even as he burns? Or the islanders who have organized their entire existence around ensuring their crops survive the winter?

Midsommar: The Sequel That Wasn’t

Ari Aster’s Midsommar doesn’t remake The Wicker Man. It inverts it.

Where Howie is a man of principle who refuses to compromise, Dani Ardor is a woman in crisis looking for a place to belong. Where Howie is trapped by deception, Dani walks into the Hårga commune with her eyes increasingly open, and chooses to stay anyway.

The film opens with one of the most disturbing sequences you’ll see in any horror movie. Dani’s sister dies by suicide, taking her parents with her. In the span of minutes, Dani loses her entire family. Her boyfriend Christian, a piece of shit, let’s be clear, doesn’t even notice she’s falling apart. He’s too busy smoking resin and planning a trip to Sweden that he hadn’t invited her to.

When she forces her way onto that trip, she’s not joining a vacation. She’s joining a community that will eventually offer her something she’s never had: genuine belonging.

The Hårga operate on a completely different logic than the islanders in The Wicker Man. They’re not hiding. They’re not deceptive. They openly tell the outsiders about their traditions, their festivals, their beliefs. They explain the Ättestupa, the ritual where the elderly voluntarily end their lives at 72 to rejoin the earth. They show their sacred runes. They invite the visitors to participate.

And Dani, traumatized and isolated, begins to see this not as horror but as home.

This is where Midsommar becomes something more than a folk horror film. It becomes a breakup movie. A revenge narrative. A story about a woman finding power in a community that sees her, values her, and, ultimately, chooses to make her their queen.

The Real Traditions Hidden in the Fiction

Here’s what makes both films work on a level beyond pure entertainment: they’re built on actual research into real pagan traditions.

The maypole isn’t invented for The Wicker Man. It’s a genuine folk tradition still practiced in England. The Wheel of the Year, the seasonal cycle of death and rebirth that runs through both films, is a real framework in modern pagan practice. The runes that appear throughout Midsommar aren’t random symbols. They’re from the actual Elder Futhark and Younger Futhark alphabets used in Norse culture. The number nine appears repeatedly in Midsommar for a reason: Odin hung from the Tree of Life for nine days to gain wisdom. That’s Norse mythology, not movie invention.

The Ättestupa, the elder sacrifice ritual in Midsommar, is based on actual Norse folklore. Did it happen exactly as the film portrays it? Probably not. But the concept existed. The tradition had weight in the culture.

This is what separates folk horror from standard slasher films. It’s not just scaring you with made-up monsters. It’s taking real spiritual traditions and asking: what if we took this seriously? What if we actually believed this deeply? What would we be willing to do?

The answer, in both films, is disturbing. Sacrifice. Murder. The subordination of individual will to community need.

Why These Films Still Matter

The reason The Wicker Man and Midsommar haunt audiences isn’t because they show us evil people. It’s because they show us people with genuine beliefs acting on those beliefs with complete conviction.

Sergeant Howie isn’t portrayed as stupid for clinging to his faith. He’s portrayed as principled. Lord Summerisle isn’t a cartoon villain. He’s a man who has built a functioning community that takes care of its members, right up until the moment it decides you’re the price of survival.

Dani isn’t rescued from the Hårga at the end of Midsommar. She chooses to stay. She chooses to sacrifice the man who never truly saw her. She chooses a community that does.

That’s the real horror. Not the jump scare. Not the gore. The horror is recognizing that under certain conditions, isolation, grief, genuine community need, any of us might make the same choice.

Both films are arguing the same thing from opposite angles: belief systems are powerful. Community is powerful. And when those two forces align, individual morality becomes almost irrelevant.

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