This British Folk Horror essay contains spoilers for A Warning to the Curious, Stigma, Penda’s Fen and Enys Men. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

There was a time during the 1960s and 70s that horror cinema, and British horror cinema in particular, turned its gaze towards rural landscapes. Rejecting the Gothicism found in interior spaces that dominated many Hammer Horror productions or the broodiness of films like The Old Dark House (1932) or director James Whale’s other Universal pictures, idyllic rural spaces and idiosyncratic villages came to form the backdrop for explorations into morality, superstition and occultism. While the horror cinema in America seemed increasingly influenced by science fiction — The Thing from Another World (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) or The Fly (1958), for example — British cinema saw rurality and its landscape used as isolating spaces where outsiders would be drawn inwards into its claustrophobic eccentricity. This trend could perhaps be traced back to Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned (1960) that was adapted from John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), whose use of an unremarkable, typical English village makes its story even more sinister through the ordinariness of its location. The emphasis on landscape as a means of isolating communities perhaps came to prominence, however, with a series of films often grouped as the “Unholy Trinity.” Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and, one of Britain’s greatest ever horror films, The Wicker Man (1973) all share a pervasive nihilism and a use of countryside settings to cut off its protagonists from rational and normative moral standards, setting a benchmark for what folk horror cinema would grow to become and understood as. 

A flurry of short films made as part of anthology series such as the BBC’s Omnibus (1967-2003) or A Ghost Story for Christmas (1971-78) helped compound the pastoral as places that could summon supernatural forces from beneath its surface. Jonathan Miller’s Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968) or Lawrence Gordon Clark’s A Warning to the Curious (1972) — both adaptations of M.R. James short stories, as many were — set their narratives within isolated locations as characters unearth objects from beneath the soil and unwittingly release ghostly apparitions. In the case of the aptly titled A Warning to the Curious, Peter Vaughan plays an amateur archaeologist, Paxton, on a trip from London to the north Norfolk coast in order to track down one of the three legendary crowns of East Anglia. Discovering that the crown had been guarded by the local Ager family, Paxton ventures into the strange landscape of Holkham Wood, where a mix of sand dunes and dark pine trees only help in highlighting a sense of the uncanny. Upon unearthing the crown, Paxton is then stalked by the item’s supernatural guardian — the dead William Ager, who is often seen as a hazy, shadowy apparition against the coastline’s horizon. The landscape in Clark’s film only heightens the fear through its often desolate and isolating nature, finally being manifest through Ager’s vengeful ghost.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Similarly, in Lawrence Gordon Clark’s 1977 film Stigma (made from an original script by Clive Exton), Katherine and Peter have moved into a cottage on the outskirts of Avebury, a small village formed within the confines of an ancient stone circle. Standing stones and other neolithic monuments have an ongoing relationship within folklore and folk horror, specifically, and Stigma’s location recalls films like Night of the Demon (1957), where a scene amongst Stonehenge helps the protagonist come to terms with the idea of paranormal activity. Derek Jarman’s early short film A Journey to Avebury (1971) also comes to mind, where the dark orange hue of the super 8mm adds an eerie and unsettling atmosphere to the Avebury landscape. In Stigma, one of the standing stones is being readied for removal from Katherine and Peter’s back garden. The family is again isolated amongst the starkness of the landscape, hemmed within the confines of the stones that are in eyeshot through the cottage’s windows. Yet it is only when the stone is unearthed, like Paxton’s crown in A Warning to the Curious, where the real horror becomes manifest, this time through a kind of body horror akin to many David Cronenberg films that would come to take prominence a decade later. The more the stone is unearthed and disrupted from its natural state, the more Katherine is afflicted by strange wounds as blood oozes slowly through her skin, almost resembling a lichen growing out over a rock face. In these films, the landscape acts as a sentient conjuror looking to haunt those who unearth the land’s long hidden secrets, exposing ancient, hidden powers.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Friday the 13th’

Whether it’s Holkham Wood or the stone circle at Avebury, British folk horror frequently uses the eeriness of empty, liminal spaces to evoke a sense of psychological unease. These places — coastal thresholds, forests, fields, moors — are depicted as almost otherworldly, inhabited by the supernatural that hide out of sight just beneath the surface of the landscape. Another film that sets its story specifically within a liminal space is Alan Clarke’s Penda’s Fen (1974), written by playwright David Rudkin. Made as part of the BBC’s Play for Today, an anthology series often considered synonymous with A Ghost Story for Christmas, Penda’s Fen situates its story in the Worcestershire countryside within an isolated rural community, cut off from the rest of the world by the imposing figure of the Malvern hills. One person transfixed by this landscape is Stephen Franklin (played by Spencer Banks), who the film follows in the final days before his 18th birthday. A priggish, unsympathetic character, Stephen is obsessed by his English heritage and finds any form of transgression as grossly blasphemous or borderline satanic. Yet, despite his rigid nationalism and conservative outlook, something starts stirring inside Stephen as he ritualistically scrambles down the stairs each morning to greet the milkman, Joel, a lad from his year group at school. Unaware of its implications, Stephen’s encounters with Joel ignites a series of visceral dreams that soon come to haunt him and kindles a journey of self discovery. 

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’

Simultaneously, something starts to stir amongst the surrounding landscape, too. An ominous secret government facility appears within the fenland, and Arne, a local playwright, laments “what is it that is hidden beneath this shell of lovely earth?” One night, a boy returns from the fields badly burnt and disfigured from a fire — a government experiment gone wrong, perhaps, that has awakened something sinister and ancient in the fen. In the aftermath, the road into the village is closed off, further isolating those that are stuck there. Stephen, now trapped, has no choice but to travel through the fenland back from school. However, he notices that the road closure sign misspells the name of his village as “Pinfin” instead of “Pinvin,” a medieval spelling that is derived from King Penda, England’s last pagan ruler who died in AD 655. This subtle anachronism signals the encroachment of the past into the present as the fenland acts as a liminal space where temporal boundaries, the natural and the supernatural, start to become porous. The natural world becomes an active participant in Stephen’s experiences, especially in drawing out the mystical visions that he increasingly starts to be haunted by, and the fenland becomes the perfect breeding ground for Stephen to confront the prejudices that has made up his worldview.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘The First Omen

One of these visions takes place in an abandoned farm outbuilding as Stephen takes cover from the rain, running over the fen’s marshland before it gets flooded with water. Amongst the ruins is the ghost of Edward Elgar, Stephen’s artistic hero. This chance encounter, in particular, helps to undermine Stephen’s narrow, conservative sense of national identity as Elgar reveals to him the secret to his famous Enigma Variations, offering him a clue to a hidden joke that mocks the very notion of conformity. Elgar’s spectral appearance becomes symbolic of the past’s power to influence the present and acts as a catalyst for Stephen’s personal transformation, as it helps loosen the grip of his ingrained conservatism. Moments later, Stephen learns that he was adopted at birth and born of foreign parents (an identity that further disorients his sense of self and belonging) — a revelation his father, the village’s parson, discloses on Stephen’s 18th birthday and another moment that acts as a dramatic step in Stephen’s rejection of his past worldview.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Time Cut’

The image of the Malvern hills, too, becomes an increasingly important symbol and active participant in Stephen’s acceptance of his sexuality and changing identity. Throughout Penda’s Fen, these hills act as a location where both dark and light forces interact. The opening of the film establishes that this is a setting of pastoral tranquility where sheep graze and the summer’s sun glows over the hills. Then a mutilated hand rises from the foreground, superimposed over the image, disrupting the idyllic scene. Elsewhere, Stephen dreams of a golden angel rising from within the hills, a symbol of transcendence and a further manifestation of Stephen’s changing inner psyche. It is apt, then, that the film concludes from the summit of this landscape where both the forces of darkness and light are manifested and challenge Stephen’s understanding of the world around him. At the hills, two Mary Whitehouse-like figures pursue after Stephen, hellbent on order and conformity, and attempt to chase Stephen away from the liberalism that he has become increasingly enticed by. Meanwhile, the ghost of King Penda appears ablaze in smoke behind Stephen on the summit, a symbol of a forgotten past and the landscape’s complex history. Penda’s visage acts as one of hope. “Stephen, be secret. Child, be strange. Dark, true, impure and dissonant,” he says, aiding in Stephen’s rejection of a rigid ideology, choosing to acknowledge, instead, that his identity is complex and shifting. “My race is mixed. My sex is mixed. I am woman and man. Light with darkness. I am nothing pure. I am mud and flame!” The conclusion is ambiguous yet Stephen is seen walking down the other side of the hills ready to experience the world with a renewed sense of open-mindedness. This scene in Penda’s Fen predates John Mackenzie’s use of a hilltop ruin as a site where the past and present intersect in his film Red Shift (1978), yet still compounds the idea that these hills, and rural landscapes more broadly, are places where transformation — both spiritual and psychological — can occur.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘MaXXXine’

Rural landscapes as spaces where hidden histories emerge and supernatural forces are conjured is a theme that continues to resonate in contemporary cinema, too. This trope is particularly evident in two British films from the 2020s: Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre (2023) and Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men (2022). Both of these films are further examples where characters are isolated from society in remote, rural settings and both are interestingly set during the 1970s. Much like A Warning to the Curious or Stigma, Starve Acre follows Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette (Morfydd Clark) as they dig up and uncover animal bones near an ancient tree, inadvertently unleashing a dark, supernatural force that threatens their farm and brings the bones to life. In the case of Enys Men, Jenkin explores the land through shifting weather and the ecology of a remote island, where a lone researcher’s repeated interactions with the landscape help expose its layers of history and hidden malevolence.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘A Quiet Place Part II’

Set in 1973, the same year as The Wicker Man and Penda’s Fen, Enys Men follows a solitary woman (referred to as “the Volunteer” and played by Mary Woodvine) conducting environmental research on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. Her daily routine is methodical and isolating: she measures the temperature of the soil around a rare flower clinging to the island’s cliff edge and throws stones down a dark, seemingly endless mining shaft. The Volunteer also ranks the handle of a fuel pump outside her cottage, and meticulously records her findings in a notebook. Over time, the character’s notes consistently report “no change” — both to the flower and the environment. Yet, amongst this monotony, something increasingly unnatural starts to stir in the landscape and ultimately comes to break the ritualism of the Volunteer’s routine.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘Fresh

The island’s eerie desolation mirrors the foreboding atmosphere of Holkham Wood in A Warning to the Curious, with the flora, the mining shaft and the cliffs all playing key roles in reflecting the Volunteer’s eventual psychological disintegration. The land itself almost becomes a living, breathing entity, as strange noises start to emanate from within the mining shaft and sudden changes of weather conjure repeated, subliminal images that increasingly haunt the Volunteer. When some lichen grows on the flower she has been studying, the world around the Volunteer starts to unravel the land’s hidden history and her own traumatic personal memories begin to surface in unsettling ways. Brief glimpses of Bal Maidens near the cliff edge, children singing around a standing stone or miners emerging from the mining shaft start to infiltrate the Volunteer’s perception of the landscape, manifesting the island’s long buried past. These apparitions are also indicative of the land’s history as a place of labor and exploitation, reflecting how past violence (whether economic or physical) lingers in the present. The mine’s ruinous chimney reinforces that this is an industry in decay,  yet it more importantly visually resembles a lone standing stone that is seen outside the Volunteer’s cottage, itself a symbol of the land’s forgotten past and a conduit for the supernatural forces that emerge from the island. 

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Past Lives’

Also, the ambiguity behind the island’s geography helps blur the lines between what is real and what is imagined, throwing into question the Volunteer’s grasp of reality. This recalls Katherine’s relationship to the landscape in Stigma, where she is often left questioning the reality of her condition, wondering if the red stain on her blouse was from a wound below her ribs or the bottle of red wine she opened during dinner. In Enys Men, the landscape is portrayed entirely through the perspective of the Volunteer, as she repeatedly traverses indistinguishable terrain. This disorienting portrayal of the island bears a connection to Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1978 film The Shout, where desolate, otherworldly-looking landscapes (such as sand dunes and rocky craters) undermine the reliability of the narrative, which, like Enys Men, is filtered through the perspective of an unstable protagonist. Enys Men relies on key markers in order to distinguish where the Volunteer finds herself on the island. Whether at the mine shaft, near the chimney, by the standing stone or examining the flower, the daily routine is reflected through repeated images of these locations, therefore making them more subliminal, and further creating a disorientating and dizzying effect. As the Volunteer spends more time on the island, the boundary between the natural world and her mind blurs.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End’

While the lichen continues to grow on the flower, a wound on the Volunteer’s stomach becomes overrun by a similar fungus — another nod to the character of Katherine in Stigma. This wound is connected to a memory the Volunteer has of a girl falling through the roof of the greenhouse where she cranks the fuel pump. Is this girl a younger version of the Volunteer, or perhaps her child? Enys Men leaves this question unresolved, further compounding the ambiguity surrounding the protagonist’s state of mind. At times, one even wonders if the Volunteer is herself a ghostly apparition. One standout sequence, in particular, sees the protagonist confront the standing stone after hearing the faint singing of children’s voices. Like a ghost from a Charles Dickens novel, a visage of the Volunteer wearing a white nightdress appears from the standing stone. It shudders and frantically moves towards the cottage — an indication that the stone has some form of supernatural power and is able to conjure voices or visions from the island’s past or from within the Volunteer’s mind. 

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Heart of Stone’

This blending of past and present, along with memory and reality, likens the land to a kind of dreamscape; another liminal space where time is fluid, like that of the hills from Penda’s Fen. This is heightened by the isolation of the location and the fact that the Volunteer rarely (if ever) interacts with the outside world. Jenkin compounds this sense of disconnection through the use of a radio transmitter — the Volunteer’s sole connection to the mainland. Seemingly random broadcasts break the silence of the character’s routine, serving as a kind of auditory hallucination that complicates her understanding of what is happening around her. The crackling, almost inaudible messages from the transmitter could be seen as echoes of past traumas; a link to memories that are distant yet persistently present, as manifested through the young girl. The static on the radio reflects her fragmented understanding of those memories, linking the auditory hallucinations she experiences with the film’s pervasive subliminal imagery and time-hopping structure.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Know the Cast: ‘Reminiscence’

In the final moments of Enys Men, the Volunteer’s cottage is in decay. She has now gone, the island is left alone, the sea continues to crash against the cliff edge and the standing stone is left dormant. Now seemingly left to its own devices, perhaps this is the island as seen in the present day, some 50 years after the events of the film. Jenkin shot Enys Men on 16mm color stock using a vintage Bolex camera, which gives the images a tactile, almost archaic texture. Set in the 1970s, Enys Men is an homage to that era’s cinematic landscape, just as Penda’s Fen captures the tensions of post-war Britain, caught between conservative forces and the rising counterculture. Yet both these films, and countless others of their ilk, turn to rural settings as a means of exploring and unraveling societal shifts. The landscapes in these films are not just backdrops but living entities, conjurors of deep histories or spectral presences that reveal unsettling truths when their protagonists get too close or dig too deeply. As William Ager ominously warns in A Warning to the Curious, “No diggin’ ‘ere” — a reminder that some pasts, once disturbed, refuse to stay buried.

Edwin Miles (@eaj_miles) is a filmmaker, screenwriter and documentarian from the West Midlands, United Kingdom. Now based in London, Edwin’s experimental work reflects on ideas of family and memory, home and displacement. His favourite filmmakers include Derek Jarman, David Lynch and Kazuhiro Sôda. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

British Folk Horror Essay: Related — Soundtracks of Cinema: ‘Speak No Evil’