Troubling Folk Horror: Exoticism, Metonymy, and Solipsism in the "Unholy Trinity" and Beyond

This article seeks to make a critical intervention in troubling early understandings of folk horror by subjecting its emergent discourses to interdisciplinary scholarly critique, drawing in particular upon perspectives from culture studies, political theory, and critical anthropology. Beginning with an examination of the word folk, this article identifies three key tropes within folk horror: (I) a sense of the past as a foreign country; (II) the framing of indigenous communities as monstrous; and (III) an alternate underlying narrative archetype, premised upon encounters with difference.