It was 10 years ago today that The Witch arrived in theaters, launching not just the career of historical horror filmmaker par excellence Robert Eggers, but bringing mainstream attention to a curious and niche corner of the genre: folk horror.
A loosely defined category, folk horror first emerged on screen in the late 1960s and early '70s with the field’s “Unholy Trinity”: Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). Numerous other examples, both in literature and in theatres, appeared before and after that trio of films, but many of them — particularly those aired as British TV movies or produced by small companies — vanished into obscurity for decades.
