The Museum of Modern Art will present “Horror: Messaging the Monstrous – Folk Horror” as a part of its horror film series at The Museum of Modern Art screening August 14th through August 21st. Folk horror is an expansive subgenre, tracing its film foundations to 1970s Britain but universal and international as a storytelling device.

Stemming from folkloric traditions in which age-old beliefs, customs, and stories of community are passed on through the generations, folk horror films portray unsettling narratives that both reflect and shape the culture. These stories are often rooted in nature and isolation, imbued with spiritual resonance, and related to powers of darkness: ghost stories, places unfamiliar, and horrors lurking just beneath the surface. Ultimately, folk horror offers us a way to check our communal moral systems by evaluating how we proceed within the world, laying bare the horrors that have been so we can avoid the mistakes of the past. Or else.

This section of Horror: Messaging the Monstrous offers an international selection of films (from the UK, Laos, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, the US, and Guatemala) to highlight folktales’ universal relevance in horror.

For more information and information on how to register, visit moma.org/horror.

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