15 Best Folk Horror Movies of the 21st Century

15 best folk horror movies of the 21st century: Folk horror has always felt a little different from other horror. Films like Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973) helped define the subgenre, but folk horror can come from almost anywhere. At its heart, it gets its horror from local folklore—traditions, pagan beliefs, ancestral myths, witchcraft, and supernatural forces tied to a particular culture. Rituals often become an important part of the horror, from shamanism and ceremonies to traditional festivals and burial practices.

Most folk horror films take place in remote, desolate locations, such as isolated towns, farms, mountains, islands, or other rural areas cut off from the rest of the world. The films on this list take us to some very different corners of the world: the 15th-century Austrian Alps, a remote Macedonian mountain village in the 19th century, rural Estonia, and late-17th-century Kerala, each adding a unique cultural texture to the horror.

Folk horror also loves putting modern thinking up against old beliefs. Characters who believe in reason and logic can suddenly find themselves surrounded by traditions they struggle to understand, let alone accept. That clash can get ugly, especially when those traditions become tied to fear, oppression, or something genuinely supernatural.

The 21st century has produced an amazing run of folk horror films that go far beyond their British origins, bringing diverse traditions and myths from all over the world to the screen. What makes these films stick in the mind isn’t simply the scares, but the dread, atmosphere, cultural specificity, and emotional heft.

So, without further ado, these are the 15 best folk horror movies of the 21st century.

15. The Ritual (2017) – David Bruckner

David Bruckner makes the Scandinavian wilderness one of The Ritual’s most effective weapons, turning its vast beauty into an increasingly creepy, hostile landscape. The story is fairly easy to predict, but the atmosphere is so creepy and foreboding that the film still gets under your skin.

Based on Adam Nevill’s novel, The Ritual unites Luke (Rafe Spall), Hutch (Robert James-Collier), Phil (Arsher Ali), and Dom (Sam Troughton) for a hiking trip through the Swedish wilderness, where they intend to hike through the forest in memory of a friend who was killed during a robbery. But their journey quickly turns into a nightmare as they sense something is seriously wrong in the forest and believe a sinister presence is chasing them.

The film follows a typical ‘lost in the woods’ template in its first two acts, strongly echoing the structure and escalating paranoia of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Bruckner gets a lot of mileage out of the setting. The Scandinavian forest is shrouded in fog and rain, and before long it stops feeling like a place the characters are lost in and starts feeling actively hostile. The tension between the friends makes it worse, especially because so much guilt sits between them. That combination gives The Ritual a psychological edge I find more effective than The Blair Witch Project’s bare-bones approach.

The film’s last act raises the bar with a visceral, mythology-driven encounter that completely embraces its folk-horror roots. The creature is easily one of the film’s most memorable touches. Its design is creepy and distinctively odd. Its menacing presence feels genuinely threatening and not generic. The film’s isolated Scandinavian forest setting (where escape seems impossible), its use of Norse mythology and a jötunn-like creature, a pagan cult performing barbaric acts, and effective exploration of guilt make The Ritual a solid entry on the list of best folk horror movies of the 21st century. Available on Netflix.

14. The Medium (2021) – Banjong Pisanthanakun

Despite my qualms about some of its artistic decisions, The Medium remains a spooky, unnerving, culturally rich Thai folk horror film about shamanism, possession, and familial tragedy in Thailand’s Isan region.

The film is shot like a documentary, following a crew as they spend time with Nim (Sawanee Utoomma), a local medium who says she can channel the ancestral spirit, Ba Yan. Things get interesting when Nim’s niece, Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech), starts behaving strangely. Nim believes Ba Yan has chosen Mink as her next vessel, but Mink’s behavior soon takes a much darker turn, and before long, nobody around her is safe.

I was never particularly bothered by the film’s 130-minute length because, for the most part, it kept me hooked. The early sections with Nim and her family are intriguing, especially the time the film spends with Mink before things completely spiral out of control. You watch her slowly change, little by little, from a normal young woman into someone increasingly erratic and disturbing, and that gradual descent makes the eventual possession hit harder. The film also feels deeply connected to Thai culture, traditions, superstition, and folklore, using the family’s shamanic beliefs to dig into generational trauma and the darker side of spiritual inheritance.

The film goes full bonkers in its final act, delivering chaotic, disturbing, and truly horrifying possession set pieces. But the film’s pseudo-documentary format didn’t quite work for me, which diminished the climax’s potential for impact, cinematic flair, and intensity. I get what the film is going for with the documentary approach. It makes the folklore feel more grounded, lets the horror creep in organically, and gives everything a fly-on-the-wall quality. The problem is that the same style starts holding the film back later on. It takes some of the atmosphere and visual punch out of the horror, and by the third act, the whole thing starts to lose credibility because the crew keeps recording while everything around them falls apart. Still, the film’s commitment to local folklore and growing sense of dread make it worth watching and seeking out. Available on Shudder.

13. Kill List (2013) – Ben Wheatley

I’ve already written about and included Ben Wheatley’s Kill List in my list of the 20 best films where the villain wins. It begins as a naturalistic drama about Jay (Neil Maskell), an ex-soldier dealing with unemployment, a strained marriage, money problems, and unresolved trauma. His best friend and partner, Gal (Michael Smiley), drags him back into the dangerous world of contract killing, and they get hired by a mysterious client to kill three people. But the job turns out to be more complicated than they had anticipated.

Kill List belongs in this list for its absolutely nightmarish final stretch. What starts as a grim crime drama takes a sharp turn into something much darker, with folk-horror elements arriving like a punch to the gut, leaving you with an uncomfortable feeling that doesn’t disappear when the film ends. The film gradually opens the door to a much darker world of isolated communities, pagan rituals, sacrifice, and ancient forces hiding beneath modern Britain.

The film never gives you a neat explanation for any of it, which only makes it feel even more sinister. You’re left trying to work out what the cult actually believes, what it wants, and just how much of what you’ve seen was hiding in plain sight. The fact that an ordinary guy in a normal world gets caught up in something terrible without even knowing it makes the final scene hit much harder, leaving you with an ending that is both devastating and hard to shake. Available on Shudder.

Next Read: 20 Best Movies Where the Villain Wins

12. Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2017) – Lukas Feigelfeld

Hagazussa is arguably the most divisive film on the list. I was underwhelmed when it came out, perhaps because I was expecting a stronger supernatural element, but rewatching it recently made me appreciate it as a cold, precise psychological chiller—a calculated, minimalist powerhouse of human horror.

Set in the Austrian Alps during the 15th century, Hagazussa follows Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen as an adult, Celina Peter as a child), a young goatherd who lives with her mother in a small, isolated house away from the village. They are ostracized by the locals, who consider the two women to be witches and leave them to live in poverty, suspicion, and constant antagonism. Albrun is left alone when her mother dies of the plague. Years later, she has a daughter of her own, but the isolation remains the same, as does the villagers’ attitude toward her.

This is slow-burn horror in the truest sense. The film barely bothers with jump scares, instead letting its bleak imagery and growing psychological unease slowly get under your skin. The film’s horror is tied closely to Albrun’s isolation. Albrun lives alone in the mountains, and the villagers watch her with suspicion rather than empathy. Her story also says something pretty ugly about what happens to women who refuse to fit the mould, especially in a place where calling a woman a witch is easier than trying to understand her. All that cruelty, rejection, and loss eventually take their toll on her.

The film’s final act ventures into surreal territory, blurring the line between psychological breakdown and genuine witchcraft and resulting in some of the most visceral imagery on this list. At its heart, Hagazussa is an unsettling, detailed character study of Albrun, a woman pushed away by everyone around her, slowly showing what that kind of loneliness does to a person against bleak woods and shadowy mountain landscapes. Aleksandra Cwen is fantastic as Albrun, saying so much without actually saying much at all. She barely needs dialogue to show what the character is feeling; a look, a stiff movement, or the slightest change in her expression can say more than a whole conversation. Available on Prime Video.

Check out: 20 Best Horror Movies of 2025 here

11. You Won’t Be Alone (2022) – Goran Stolevski

Goran Stolevski’s debut feature, You Won’t Be Alone, isn’t for everyone. It is artsy to a fault, tests the viewer’s patience, and has limited appeal as a conventional horror film. But I’ve included it here for its unique idea, hypnotic atmosphere, and how it rethinks folk horror with surprising emotional and philosophical richness.

The story takes place in a remote Macedonian mountain village during the 19th century, where Nevena (Sara Klimoska) grows up in complete isolation with her mother. Years earlier, her mother made a desperate bargain with an ancient witch, the Wolf-Eateress (Anamaria Marinca), and eventually that bargain comes due. When Nevena grows up, the witch returns for what she was promised, killing her mother and turning Nevena into a shapeshifter. What follows is a strange journey through different bodies and different lives, as Nevena slowly discovers what it feels like to love, suffer, and belong.

At times, You Won’t Be Alone feels like Terrence Malick wandered into folk horror. The film lingers on nature, slips into philosophical voiceover, and finds something profound in even the smallest moments, treating the whole story as a meditation on what it means to exist. The film’s folk horror comes from a very specific place: rural Macedonia, Balkan folklore, and the old legend of the Wolf-Eateress. But Stolevski takes those ingredients somewhere pretty unusual, mixing them with body horror and a coming-of-age story. As Nevena moves between bodies and identities, she slowly discovers what it means to be human. Beneath the shapeshifting, though, the film is a poetic, hypnotic meditation on identity, curiosity, and the beauty and cruelty of human existence. Available to rent on Prime Video.

10. Apostle (2018) – Gareth Evans

Gareth Evans made his name by turning action into an absolute assault on the senses (in a good way) with The Raid and The Raid 2, so Apostle feels like an unexpected change of direction. This time, he trades martial-arts mayhem for period folk horror, building a dark world around religious fanaticism, cults, violence, and blind faith. The film has its problems, but it’s ambitious enough to show a very different side of Evans.

Set in 1905, the story follows Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens), a former missionary whose past still weighs heavily on him, as he travels to a remote Welsh island to rescue his sister from a religious cult. The island is ruled by Prophet Malcolm (Michael Sheen), a charismatic man whose desperation is becoming harder to hide. Thomas infiltrates the community, posing as one of them, but the more he looks around, the more disturbing and dark secrets he finds. And getting his sister back turns out to be only the beginning of his problems.

The basic premise has a familiar The Wicker Man flavor: a stranger arrives at a remote community for personal reasons, only to realize the place is hiding something deeply wrong. The film works best when it sticks with his search for his sister, especially in the nastier sequences, like the trip beneath Malcolm’s house that ends with Thomas being dragged through that blood-soaked canal before he finally comes face-to-face with the goddess.

My biggest issue with Apostle is that it keeps shifting focus just as Thomas’s search for his sister starts to pick up. The subplot involving a young couple is particularly hard to care about, and these detours gradually take the tension out of the search for his sister. That makes the 130-minute runtime feel a bit bloated. Even Thomas’s own backstory feels like something Evans starts but never fully develops.

The film finds its footing again in the final act, when it finally goes all-in on the folk horror. The truth behind the goddess is genuinely disturbing, and it gives the film an interesting environmental edge: nature isn’t something humans can keep taking from without consequences. The film also takes a pretty bleak view of faith. Once faith becomes a means of controlling others, fear and ritual become tools of power, especially as those in charge grow desperate to hold on to what they have. Apostle isn’t perfect, but it is audacious in its vision and displays Evans’ solid filmmaking skills that go beyond pure action. Available on Netflix.

Check out the Detailed Analysis of Apostle here

9. Impetigore (2019) – Joko Anwar

Joko Anwar has made some terrific genre films over the years, from the stylish Dead Time: Kala (2007) and eerie The Forbidden Door (2009) to the hugely successful Satan’s Slaves (2017). Impetigore keeps that run going as he turns to Indonesian folk horror, creating one of his most visually striking films while blending local folklore with a steadily tightening sense of unease and some genuinely gruesome horror.

Maya (Tara Basro), a young woman living in Jakarta, is barely getting by when she discovers she might have inherited a house in a remote village. Desperate for money, she sees a chance to sell the property and travels to the village with her best friend Dini (Marissa Anita). But the village isn’t exactly welcoming. From the moment they arrive, something is off, and the locals act in ways Maya and Dini can’t comprehend. Before long, she discovers that an old curse has fallen over the village, leaving it without children and its residents struggling with the aftermath of something terrible.

Anwar doesn’t rush Maya and Dini’s journey to the village. We see them travel farther and farther from Jakarta, and with every mile the place feels more remote and cut off. By the time they finally arrive, the place already feels wrong. Anwar gives the village an almost hostile presence, using its quiet roads, empty spaces, and strange stillness to make Maya and Dini feel increasingly trapped.

The further the story goes, the more you want to know about the folklore at the heart of the curse. Anwar wisely doesn’t spell everything out through dialogue. Instead, the village’s history and the truth behind the curse emerge through visual storytelling, which makes the whole thing feel far more unsettling and haunting. The film doesn’t need jump scares to make you uncomfortable. Its horror comes from a curse tied to family secrets, a desperate community, and a past that refuses to stay buried. Impetigore has plenty of what you want from folk horror, but it also gives those familiar ideas a distinctly Indonesian and Southeast Asian flavor. Available on Shudder.

8. When Evil Lurks (2023) – Damián Lugna

With When Evil Lurks, Demián Rugna takes demonic possession somewhere completely different. You won’t find priests, holy water, or the usual religious rituals here. Instead, the evil behaves almost like a disease, spreading through an isolated rural community and leaving behind a trail of gruesome violence and panic.

The story follows brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimi (Demián Salomón), who discover a horribly swollen “rotten” man in a shack near their home in rural Argentina. The man has an unborn demon growing inside him, and the brothers soon learn that there are very specific rules for dealing with it. Unfortunately, they don’t fully understand those rules—or follow them very well. Their mistakes unleash something that quickly spirals beyond their control.

Rugna gives the film its own strange set of rules and builds a mythology around rural Argentina that feels both ancient and completely original. A “rotten” is essentially a person carrying an unborn demon that is trying to enter the world. The only way to stop that from happening is to follow seven very specific rules: no electric lights, stay away from animals, leave behind anything that has been near the Rotten, never hurt the Rotten, never name the evil, never use guns, and, perhaps most importantly, don’t give in to fear. Not all of these rules land equally well in the screenplay, and some, like the ban on electric lights, aren’t explained or used particularly effectively. But when the characters break the rule against using firearms, the consequences are genuinely horrifying.

The film keeps you guessing about who will be next, and that uncertainty makes the violence hit even harder. Someone can be perfectly fine one moment and then suddenly become part of one of the film’s gruesome, stomach-churning set pieces. Rugna also gives the horror a personal side through Pedro’s family problems. His strained relationship with his ex-wife, Sabrina, and his complicated bond with his sons make the spreading evil feel achingly close to home. Add the isolated Argentine setting, the mythology of the Rotten and the Cleaners, and the strange rules for keeping the evil contained, and you get a folk-horror story that feels both twisted and refreshingly vicious. Available on Shudder.

7. Tumbbad (2018) – Rahi Anil Barve

Few films have had a journey quite like Tumbbad. Director Rahi Anil Barve started writing it way back in 1993, when he was only 14, and finished the script four years later. Shooting finally began in 2012, but the film took another six years to reach the screen because of reshoots, script changes, budget problems, and an extensive post-production process. When Tumbbad finally came out in 2018, it received strong reviews and became the first Indian film to be screened at the 75th Venice International Film Festival. It flopped at the box office, though. Over time, its release on Prime Video helped it find a cult audience. That reputation only grew, leading to a 2024 re-release that earned more than twice its original box-office collection.

Set in rural Maharashtra in the early 19th century and stretching into the years after Indian independence, Tumbbad follows Vinayak (Sohum Shah), whose obsession with a legendary treasure buried in Tumbbad slowly takes over his life. The treasure is protected by Hastar, a forgotten, greedy demigod who was cast back into his mother’s womb after trying to take all the world’s gold and grain. Vinayak knows the risks, but greed keeps bringing him back. As the years pass, the obsession begins to take over his family too, and the curse of Tumbbad becomes inescapable.

Despite its arduous path and years of creative strife, Tumbbad is one of India’s most striking and visually distinctive period folk horror films to date. Tumbbad unfolds across three chapters, jumping from 1918 to the 1930s and then to 1947. Together, they trace Vinayak’s life from a young boy to a father while showing how his hunger for wealth becomes a family inheritance of its own. The changing periods also reflect different stages of India’s own journey, moving from feudal village life through colonial rule and transition and into the first years after independence.

There’s something wonderfully grim about the world of “Tumbbad.” Endless rain hangs over the village, the mansions look half-dead, and every corner seems to hold some piece of forgotten folklore. The creature effects are genuinely impressive for the budget, but it’s the cinematography that really pulls everything together, giving the film a beautiful yet unsettling fairy-tale quality. Then there’s Hastar, whose mythology gives the story its own identity, while the idea of greed passing from parent to child gives the horror a much more personal edge. Tumbbad fits naturally on the list of best folk horror movies of the 21st century. Available on Prime Video.

6. Exhuma (2024) – Jane Jae-hyun

Exhuma didn’t quite work for me the first time around. I found it overstuffed and uneven, and some parts felt messier than they needed to be. But subsequent viewings slowly changed my opinion, and I began to appreciate the film more. Beneath the supernatural chaos lies a fascinating mix of Korean cultural beliefs, shamanism, geomancy, ancestral rituals, and historical trauma, and those layers become much more rewarding once you’ve seen how everything fits together.

The story begins with a wealthy Korean-American family whose firstborn children have been plagued by a mysterious curse. Desperate for answers, they turn to the young shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and her assistant Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun). Hwa-rim soon realizes they’re dealing with something tied to an ancestral grave, so she brings in veteran geomancer Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and mortician Yeon-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) to move it. What initially looks like a straightforward exhumation quickly turns into something far more disturbing, connecting the family’s curse to Korea’s painful colonial history and uncovering an evil far worse than the restless spirit they expected.

The film’s first half works as a supernatural mystery, with a family trying to understand why their firstborn children keep suffering from a strange ancestral curse. The answer leads back to an ancestor whose troubled burial has left a restless spirit behind, bringing illness, misfortune, and death to the family. This is where Exhuma really benefits from its Korean setting and cultural foundations. The film takes its time with the rituals, geomantic beliefs, and the process of opening the grave, making everything feel less like a standard horror-movie exorcism and more like a procedure governed by rules that the characters genuinely believe in. That grounded approach gives the first half much of its tension.

The second half takes the story somewhere much darker, revealing an evil force connected to Korea’s colonial past and far more dangerous than the spirit we started with. From here, the film feels bigger and more intense. The stakes become deeply personal, the supernatural set pieces grow more elaborate, and the tension rarely lets up. I also think Exhuma rewards a rewatch because details surrounding geomancy, Korean shamanism, and those mysterious iron spikes take on a richer meaning once you understand what the film is really doing.

The film’s folk-horror elements give Exhuma a clever way of talking about trauma, first on a personal level and then on a national one. The first half delves into the damage passed down through families, showing how unresolved pain, past wrongdoing, and ancestral neglect can come back to haunt the living. Then the scope gradually expands, and the horror becomes tied to Korea’s experience under Japanese colonial rule. The past doesn’t just stay in the past. The scars from colonialism, bloodshed, and collaboration are still embedded in the land and in the memories passed down through the generations. Exhuma is a culturally significant and distinctive entry in the best folk horror moviess of the 21st century. Available on Prime Video.

5. Midsommar (2018) – Ari Aster

Midsommar is a strange kind of nightmare. There’s almost no darkness to hide in, no gloomy haunted house, and very little of the usual horror-movie tropes. Instead, Ari Aster places his characters in a beautiful Swedish commune bathed in daylight and slowly makes that paradise feel more frightening than any dark room could. The film is a story about grief, a failing relationship, and a community whose idea of normality is deeply disturbing.

After a devastating tragedy tears her family apart, Dani (Florence Pugh) travels to Sweden with her emotionally distant boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends. They head to the Hårga commune for a midsummer celebration that happens only once every 90 years. Dani initially finds the place almost comforting. For a while, the Hårga seem almost too good to be true. They welcome their guests, live surrounded by beautiful countryside, and appear completely at peace with one another. Then Dani starts seeing things she can’t quite explain away. The festival gets stranger, the rituals more disturbing, and what looked like an eccentric celebration begins to reveal a much uglier side.

Midsommar is another film on the list that taps into the same basic premise as The Wicker Man: take an outsider, drop them into a community that seems perfectly happy in its own strange little world, and slowly reveal what that happiness is built on. But Ari Aster’s film goes much deeper, carefully establishing Dani’s character before she and the others even travel to Sweden. She is in deep grief as a result of her entire family’s death, and she is in a rocky relationship with Christian, who is emotionally distant and no longer fully invested in their relationship.

The horror works because Aster makes us care about Dani before the real nightmare begins. Initially, she is emotionally fragile, but then she finds a strange kind of comfort among the Hårga. They weep with her, rejoice with her, and make her feel like she has finally found a home. But, of course, that feeling of home costs an awful lot as the festival’s rituals take a darker, more violent, and unwatchable turn. Similar to The Witch, the film’s ending is deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation. On the one hand, it can be interpreted as a total surrender to something terrifying and destructive. On the other hand, it gives a dark, perverse form of resolution and liberation.

Florence Pugh is terrific as Dani, especially in the quieter moments when you can see how much grief she is carrying. Her loneliness and emotional dependence on Christian shape so much of what happens to her, while her growing attachment to the Hårga gives the film a disturbing way of exploring grief, neglect, toxic relationships, and the need to feel that you belong somewhere. Midsommar is a one-of-a-kind modern folk horror film that is both a breakup story and a cultural nightmare, and it deserves to be on the list of the best folk horror movies of the 21st century. Available on Max.

4. Bramayugam (2024) – Rahul Sadasivan

Rahul Sadasivan has quickly emerged as one of the most interesting voices in Indian horror. His films don’t bombard you with scares; instead, he lets a place, a silence, or a strange image slowly get under your skin. Of his three features so far, Bramayugam remains my favourite, mainly for its restrained, atmospheric style, assured direction, and distinctive visual identity. I have also included the film on the list of 20 best horror films of 2024.

Shot entirely in black and white, the film centres on Thevan (Arjun Ashokan), a lower-caste folk singer who escapes slavery and stumbles into a strange, crumbling ancestral mansion. The man who lives there, Kodumon Potti (Mammootty), welcomes him with food and a roof over his head, but something about his hospitality feels unsettling. Alongside the mysterious cook (Sidharth Bharathan), Thevan begins to question what kind of place he’s stumbled into and what Potti really is. Before long, getting out becomes a matter of survival.

The mansion feels scary long before anything truly frightening happens. The stark monochrome photography, decaying rooms, and strange noises give the place a suffocating quality that never really lets up. Sadasivan also digs into Kerala’s folklore, bringing in yakshis, chathans, and ancestral spirits while telling a more human story about caste, power, and oppression repeating itself.

Mammootty has a lot of fun with the role, starting as charming enough to make you lower your guard before gradually revealing just how cruel and frightening Potti can be. Bramayugam finds plenty of horror in the old world it brings to life, where superstition, ancestral beliefs, and feudal power are all tangled together. That gives the film a flavor you don’t often get in Indian horror. Available on SonyLIV.

Next read: 20 Best Horror Films of 2024

3. November (2017) – Rainer Sarnet

Rainer Sarnet’s November is a wonderfully odd film where you stop trying to figure out what is normal and surrender to its world. Shot in stark black and white and set in a poor 19th-century Estonian village, the film mixes pagan beliefs, Christianity, superstition, and the everyday struggle to survive. At the centre are Liina (Rea Lest), a young peasant woman hopelessly in love with Hans (Jörgen Liik), and Hans himself, who has fallen for a German baroness. Their doomed romance gives the film its emotional centre, even as the world around them grows increasingly bizarre.

November creates a strange little world where nothing feels impossible. Werewolves wander through the forests, villagers build living machines called kratts from whatever scraps they can find, and the Devil is someone they can actually bargain with—and routinely cheat. Even the plague takes different forms as it moves through the village. Yet the strangest part may be how casually everyone accepts all this. On All Souls’ Day, the dead return to visit their families, eat with them, and talk as though they never left. It’s bizarre, funny, grim, and oddly believable on its own terms.

After introducing you to the world, Sarnet focuses on the main plot, which concerns Liina and Hans. Liina’s love for Hans is one of the most moving and heartfelt expressions of desire I have seen in recent films. There’s something heartbreaking in the way Liina looks at Hans without ever really saying what she feels. She keeps putting him before herself, even when she knows he may never feel the same way, and that quiet longing gives the film much of its emotional weight. But Hans’ love for the baroness didn’t work for me because it felt more like a momentary crush than something that has grown into real love. Thankfully, that didn’t ruin it for me, as the story continues to pull you deeper into its weird, haunting world until its truly heartbreaking conclusion. November is a rare gem that fully deserves its place on this list.

Read the detailed review of November here

2. The VVitch (2015) – Robert Eggers

Even in his first feature, Robert Eggers already had a remarkably clear sense of what he wanted The VVitch to look and feel like. The period detail is meticulous, the direction never loses its grip, and the slow pace makes the dread harder to escape. Beneath the folk horror is a much uglier story about religious fanaticism, a family falling apart, and a world where it’s becoming impossible to tell whether fear comes from superstition or something genuinely supernatural.

After a dispute over religious beliefs gets William (Ralph Ineson) and his family expelled from their Puritan plantation in 1630, they make a home on an isolated farm beside the woods. For a while, they try to carry on as normal. Then their baby disappears, the crops begin to fail, and strange things start happening around the property. Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and the rest of the family are caught in a series of disturbing events that test not only their faith but their trust in one another. Meanwhile, the woods seem to be hiding something none of them can quite understand.

The film’s oppressive mood comes largely from Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s treatment of the world around the family. The forest stretches forever in every direction, but instead of offering an escape, it slowly seems to swallow them whole. The makers rely on natural light (outdoors), candles, and period-appropriate sources (indoors), and the 1.66:1 frame keeps the compositions close and intimate. It never feels like a modern horror film dressed up as a period piece. The world feels lived-in, immediate, and strangely real.

The horror in The Witch works because so much of it comes from inside the family. William’s extreme religious beliefs push them into isolation, and once fear takes hold, everyone starts looking for someone to blame. Thomasin finds herself caught in the middle, treated as dangerous whenever she steps outside the narrow role expected of her. Her journey gives the film its most interesting idea: that the freedom she finally finds can feel both liberating and horrifying. Beneath the folk horror, Eggers is telling a story about faith, repression, patriarchy, and a family slowly tearing itself apart. Available on Netflix.

1. The Wailing (2016) – Na Hong-jin

Na Hong-jin is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. He has made only four features since 2008, but each one feels bold and uncompromising, and has left a lasting impression on me. His films are brutal, unpredictable, and never give the audience an easy way out.

There’s something about The Wailing that I can never quite shake. It’s disturbing, sad, funny in places, and eventually terrifying in a way that sends shivers down your spine. I’ve seen it several times, and it still leaves me with that same uneasy feeling. The police investigation, the folklore, the mystery, the possession—all of it comes together into something I haven’t quite found anywhere else in 21st-century folk horror.

Set in the isolated mountain village of Gokseong, the film begins with a string of brutal murders and a strange illness that leaves its victims covered in a horrific skin condition and makes them act weird and violent. Local policeman Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) is pulled into the investigation, and suspicion soon falls on a mysterious Japanese stranger living in the mountains. Things become much more frightening when Jong-goo’s daughter develops the same symptoms, forcing him to confront something he doesn’t understand and cannot simply arrest.

I’ve already written about The Wailing in my list of 25 unforgettable films where the villain wins, because it’s one of those films I never get tired of talking about. It starts out as a fairly straightforward police investigation, but that doesn’t last. The humour gets darker, the mystery gets stranger, and eventually the whole thing turns into a nasty folk-horror nightmare. The further it goes, the less certain you are about anything—and that makes the whole experience wonderfully unnerving.

I’ve rarely seen a filmmaker exercise such precise control over tone and move so effortlessly between genres as Na Hong-jin does in The Wailing. It’s a 150-minute film, but you barely notice the runtime. Na Hong-jin keeps changing what you think you understand, so you’re always watching closely and trying to figure out who is responsible and what kind of evil the characters are actually dealing with.

The Wailing feels deeply rooted in Korean culture, and that’s a big part of what makes its horror work. The isolated Korean village feels grounded, and the shamanic rituals are strange, frightening, and remarkably convincing. More importantly, the local beliefs feel like a genuine part of these people’s lives rather than something added to make the film scarier. Then an ancient evil begins spreading through illness and possession, turning the community against itself. The film’s climax is devastating, leaving you deeply shaken long after the credits roll. For me, The Wailing easily tops the list of best folk horror movies of the 21st century. Available on fuboTV.

The Genre Junkie