Almost as intangible as it is resonant, there’s a sub-genre of horror once more being unearthed out of the psycho-soil of the collective unconscious; folk horror. From the forest, from the furrows, from the field, it’s particular flavour is one of the isolated backwaters, strange townspeople and even stranger traditions. And it’s all over horror video games. What follows is a short list of where its roots have spread.
But before we get started, what is “folk horror” exactly?
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1. An emphasis on the landscape. Rolling hills, tangled hedges, trees as old as the stones. The stories of folk horror happen with a powerful understanding of place. The setting doesn’t necessarily have to be rural, as urban folk horror exists too, but most folk horrors are naturally in an ancient countryside.
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2. A sense of isolation and an accompanying strangeness. Protagonists in folk horror tales are usually fish out of water from the mainland. City-dwellers come into the village, trapped by space and alienated by the unrelatable customs. There is no escape as it would be too far for them to run, and there is no comfort, as the area is too surreal or hostile.
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3. Creepy townsfolk. If there’s a community present,
and there usually is, they’re unsettlingly off-kilter and have strange traditions not found in the modern world. A hive-mind, a crowd of psychos, a many-headed communal beast that feels as ever-present as the shadows they lurk in. And their morals are just not right. -
4. A “happening”. Something where the countryside customs culminate into a festival of blood. The torture of a “witch”, the summoning of a demon, the burning of the wicker man. It can be grounded in harsh reality or in the fever-dream of the supernatural world. Or someplace in-between…
Allow me to add another link to that chain for the case of video games:
- 5. Exploration. As folk horror already has an inherent
element of place, and because many of the above elements can be found in numerous point n’ click adventures (Mystery of the Druids), visual novels (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni) or even rail shooters (House of the Dead), I’m going to limit the list to games where the player has at least some degree of freedom to wander a map, were level design and psychogeography are key to the experience. Games as a medium offer unique modes of storytelling that no other type of mass media can, and player-driven exploration is one of them. It’s a natural transition from movies that guide you through a landscape at the director’s whim, to interactive video games that put that control in the player’s hands. You get to decide where you want to go, not the director.
So, here we go. If you’re from the Facebook group and not too into video games, here’s where you can get started. If you’ve already played these games and liked them, now you’re in the know. This selection should come as no surprise as they’re all classics of the medium. Perhaps, in a time were horror games are lost in a dark forest, the folk horror label is key to understanding why these particular games strike a buried chord in the soul.
Silent Hill 1, 2 and 3
Video games’ most infamous resort town turned sour, Silent Hill has a long history of horror. Heavily inspired by David Lynch and Stephen King, the original series was an American nightmare through a Japanese prism centred around the cursed lakeside town and it’s resident cult’s attempts to summon their gnostic “god”. You play as an outsider, be th
Once a place of spiritual power for the pre-colonial Native Americans, then a prison for frontier criminals, later a serene holiday destination, and presently a ghost town corrupted by occult activity, Silent Hill is swathed in culminated darkness. In Silent Hill 2, we follow widower James Sunderland, fresh from receiving a letter from his deceased wife Mary inviting him to their “special place” of Silent Hill.
But that “special place” manifests the inner-darkness of
The original Silent Hill games were released for the PS2 and should have stayed there as, after Silent Hill 4: The Room, the property was farmed out to new American development teams that clearly didn’t get what made the original games so special. That and the awful HD remaster, which you should avoid like the plague. Emulate them on PC or buy the original discs on eBay, because they are essentials to any horror fan’s collection.
The (Forbidden) Siren series
Unsurprisingly created by the same director of Silent Hill 1, the Siren series punches the walls between zombie and Lovecraftian horror, being known for it’s iconic “Shibito” enemies; townsfolk turned into butoh-styled revenants who are all far too happy to be undead. Siren 1 and 2 (or, Forbidden Siren 1 and 2 in EU countries) for the PS2 are unfortunately also renowned for incredibly convoluted puzzles and a strange mission system that has you repeat levels over if you didn’t beat them properly….whatever “properly” means. It’s PS3 reboot, Siren: Blood Curse, doesn’t fare much better, instead becoming too hand-holdy and easy. On top of feeling like the game equivalent of a bad USA remake of a good Asian horror film.
Regardless, the story it tells is uniquely disturbing. Set in the rural
Without saying much more about the plot due to spoilers (and because the story is confusing as all hell), things take a very Lovecraftian turn the further you delve into Hanuda’s customs, history and present state of horror. But before we move on to the next Lovecraftian game on the list, we’re going to another rural corner of Japan.
The Fatal Frame/Project Zero series.
Particularly II: Crimson Butterfly, as it’s set in a village. But village or no, the entire series explores Japan’s folk past. In broadstrokes, each game is a classic haunted house story where players are sent to cursed mansions, villages and mountains to unravel a mystery involving your character. Like the Siren series, but with a more traditionally gothic twist, the Shinto occult ritual is behind th
While very few of them are of the friendly variety, and the alienation the protagonist feels is immediate, each ghost you meet represents past inhabitants of the setting with many of them frozen in the state of ritualistic torture-sacrifice that killed them. The sense of place each game carries is palpable, and it’s characterised by it’s uniquely terrifying flavour of spectre.Yet there isn’t a drop of blood between them. The ghosts are rendered in a darkly monochrome, blurry photograph style that suggests more horror than it shows.
The Fatal Frame (or Project Zero in the EU) series has been released across platforms from PS2, PS3, Xbox, Nintendo DS, Wii and WiiU. II is generally agreed to be the best in the series and is thus the hardest to find, often fetching over €100 on eBay. But they’re all good if you want something eerily folky or gothic.
Bloodborne
If you want something more vicious, violent, visceral and very Lovecraftian on the other hand, look no further than Bloodborne. The noisiest and most fast paced entry to this list, many people are overlooking it as a survival horror game due to how transgressive it is. While most horror games like Silent Hill or Fatal Frame have the noisiest moments be the scariest ones, it’s the comparative silence in Bloodborne that will leave you on edge. A gothic successor to the Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls games, it rewards perseverance and creativity in combat while having a deep emphasis on place and exploration. The difficult boss battles the series is infamous for are mere punctuations to the geographies they lurk in.
The player character wakes in Yharnam city, a dismal necropolis
The college dedicated itself to gaining insight into the nature of these Old Ones, receiving power and madness in the process. While the church dedicated itself to the administration of blood, and perhaps some more unsightly experiments. However, it seems that plots beyond human comprehension are in play, but those are there for you to attempt to figure out…
Released exclusively on the PS4, Bloodborne is an absolute must-have for anyone with the console, and folk horror aficionados. Just don’t expect it to be easy.
And now for something slightly different. Here are a few games that are partially folk horror but just as delicious.
Resident Evil 4
Our hero, special agent Leon S. Kennedy, is sent on a mission to rescue the president’s daughter from her cultish kidnappers in a rural Spanish village. Classic. The cult worships strange parasites, and in Resident Evil tradition, turn out to hold a more sci-fi secret rather than a magical one. The first of three segments is set in the village itself and it’s surrounding wilderness and mines, and would be a classic Hammer House of Horror episode if not for the grim, dirty art style.
Tomb Raider: Chronicles.
As a framing device, Chronicles has Lara’s old friends reminisce on her past adventures during a memorial service for what appears to be her death in Egypt. Each chapter is a small, self-contained story that has Lara globe-trotting from Rome to Russia to New York. And to a small haunted island off the coast of Ireland, of all places, in a gunless, slow-paced chapter of pure horror.
What little plot there is culminates in an encounter with a demonic horseman, an uncovered grimoire hidden in a labyrinth, and some very legitimate references to Irish and British folklore. It is possibly the epitome of wyrd in games, creating a type of exploration-driven horror deeply rooted in the dark faerie folklore all too familiar to the Irish and British.
GTA: San Andreas
In the second act of the main story, after main character CJ is forced into fleeing south central Los Santos, he’s left in the rural Back O’ Beyond to find his feet again. Marking the first time in the GTA franchise were rural settings were used, it was easy to get lost in the trees….only to spot a “ghost car” mysteriously rolling downhill, sometimes exploding as if a poltergeist had manipulated it. Then there was the mysterious “chainsaw killer” wearing his black cowboy outfit and walking the backroads at night. Or how about the mysterious lights that would sometimes appear in the sky???
…some say that if you stand at the right spot at the right time, wearing the right clothing and holding the right weapon, Sasquatch will run past you faster than you can keep up….
These are all, of course, only games I’ve played. I’m sure that most other horror games fall into the folk category too upon inspection, making this list is far from complete. Even non-horror adventure games like The Witcher, Folklore and Okami have their roots deeply embedded in Polish, Irish and Japanese folk culture respectively, with the occasional horror twist. As with film, the folk horror label is just as ragged at the edges with games.
Take this is a starting point then. A small glimpse through the trees at the next field worth exploring. Who knows what you might unearth on your travels…