Beyond Summerisle: Comparing Folk Horror in The Wicker Man and Get Out
Ryan Pham
Howie, the protagonist of The Wicker Man, is vulnerable to a murderous, conspiratorial plot from the film’s opening shots.
For decades, folk horror remained a subgenre of horror left largely unexplored until recent years. With the earliest forms of this genre existing in British horror since the 1960s, folk horror films all draw on similar stylistic choices and aesthetic proponents attributed to its genre and its counterculture roots. Inspired by the British counterculture movement, folk horror films play on this idea of counterculture, defined as “the evolution of social popular culture that arose dramatically during the 1960s in the west” (Scovell 6). This counterculture movement entailed “a reversion to older ideas but explored within such new social freedoms, producing […] a wide-ranging array of areas such as Folk Music and Folklore” (Scovell 7). Not embraced by British traditionalists, the counterculture movement faced criticism for its anti-Christian promotion of drug use and sexual revolution, provoking a traditionalist fear of change.
Discussed by Adam Scovell in his book Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, the folk horror genre is characterized through this reference to counterculture and a common narrative framework, which he labels as the “Folk Horror Chain.” Scovell conceives of this chain framework through an analysis of the British folk horror trilogy (Witchfinder General (Reeves, 1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Haggard, 1971), and The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973)). As he explains, the Folk Horror Chain is an archetypal framework comprised of interconnected aspects, or “chain links” as he calls them, including landscape, isolation, skewed belief systems and morality, and happenings/summonings — all of which appear in the trilogy. All these aspects help to evoke a deep sense of the uncanny, a concept Sigmund Freud describes as “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar” (124). To an audience, the uncanny strikes the viewer as deeply unsettling and uneasy, and in the case of folk horror, it is its counterculture narrative that culminates into uncanny horror.
Despite Scovell’s structured analysis in the Folk Horror Chain, there are faults with his criteria mainly due to the framework’s narrow focus on the aesthetics and narrative of the folk horror trilogy. As a result, Scovell’s definition of folk horror fails to recognize the significance of the genre politically and socially. It instead opts for an overly simplistic and limiting interpretation of it, bound by the narratives and aesthetics of British folk horror. In recent films such as Get Out (2017) directed by Jordan Peele, Peele flips the script on Scovell’s chain by presenting the modern folk horror. Accentuating and emphasizing Black trauma using folk horror tropes, Peele appeals to the chain and adds to it to produce Black folk horror. By analyzing and comparing Get Out to The Wicker Man, I hope to suggest a reconsideration of the folk horror genre to include Black folk horror. Adding a deeper dimension to folk horror through social and political representation allows the genre’s definition to expand beyond the confines of British folklore-ish counterculture, isolated rural landscapes, and the typical European White gaze.
Seen prominently in The Wicker Man, Scovell’s chain perfectly aligns with police Sergeant Howie’s (Edward Woodward) investigation. Upon receiving a mysterious letter about the disappearance of Rowan Morrison (Gerry Cowper), Howie investigates the isolated Scottish island of Summerisle. Through further contact with the island’s paganistic inhabitants, Howie suspects the islanders plan to sacrifice Rowan on the May Day holiday to rectify the previous year’s harvest failure. Stranded on the island, Howie is forced back into town, falling into a trap disguised as the May Day celebration. The event ends with Howie’s capture and his fiery demise in a giant wicker statue. Deceived, Howie was lured as the perfect sacrifice — a “pure Christian virgin who came of his own free will” (Scovell 11) — for the pagan old gods of Summerisle.
Through a close examination of The Wicker Man, Scovell’s chain perfectly embodies the narrative and aesthetics of the film. Seen in the opening credits scene, the extreme long shots of Howie’s plane in the air emphasize the secluded nature of the island as Howie flies past countless land masses to arrive at Summerisle. With a considerable part of the framework existing in the landscape aspect of folk horror, Summerisle’s remote location and rural nature serves well as a horrifying reminder of its isolation and difference from the mainland. As Scovell notes, “The horror is plainly set in motion by both their varieties of ruralism and, […] very much because of leaving the safe sanctity of the Christian church of the mainland which opens the film” (14). Both physically and religiously, the landscape around Howie changes as he leaves the mainland. Switching to a rural pagan society, the secluded rural landscape is folk horror’s confrontation of British counterculture. This confrontation is visualized in the mise-en-scène of the opening credits. The transition from the scene of Howie at the church to the long shots of the flight to Summerisle marks a shift in the camera’s filter, moving away from a grainier texture in the church to embrace a dreamier and more surreal effect while traveling to Summerisle. This transition uses form to show the landscape differences. Additionally, the use of rural landscapes and islandic surroundings evokes a primitive feeling in the audience — one characterized by old English familiarity and an uneasiness stemming from the uncanny confrontation of that historical past in the presence of modernity. As articulated by Jamie Chambers, “folk horror crystallizes the vertiginousness of the past into a dormant threat to the present” (20). Undoubtedly, Howie’s presence in Summerisle and his confrontations with the landscape’s old English norms of paganism act as a catalyst for the emergence of folk horror and its threats.
Coupled with landscape, isolation is another key proponent of the genre’s framework. In The Wicker Man, the Summerisle inhabitants “are cut off from some established social progress of the diegetic world, [so that] the Folk Horror Chain can continue in its horrific domino effect” (Scovell 12). In the film, the Summerisle’s isolation is best exemplified in the landing scene that follows the opening credits. In that scene, Howie lands down into the waters of Summerisle where he is situated in the island’s harbor. By showing shot/reverse shots between the newly arrived Howie and the dockworkers, a divide emerges due to counterculture, depicted between Howie and the inhabitants of Summerisle.
Summerisle’s islanders embody an extreme form of paganism steeped in eroticism, shaped by their isolation, and skewed morals. This skewed belief system defines the folk horror genre and contributes to the uncanny familiarity of the film. Rooted in the counterculture movement’s past, the horror comes from the film “travelling physically away from a more established society but also travelling culturally back in time because of that context” (Scovell 12-13). The uncanniness displayed through Howie’s encounters with the rural paganistic customs of the people hark back to a confrontation with counterculture, seen clearly in the fire leaping ritual scene. As a circle of naked women dances around a fire, Howie, riding by, expresses strong disapproval for the lack of sanctity in Summerisle’s traditions. With his Christian beliefs and morals, Howie’s pure and non-sexual conduct magnify the ritual into an uncanny representation of the past. The scene evokes a primitive feeling that lingers throughout the film, one that exacerbates the uneasy horror of the uncanny. Lacking the familiarity of modernity, “Folk Horror narratives need this plateau away from such modern eyes [to evoke its horror]” (Scovell 13).
Due to the skewed beliefs of the inhabitants of Summerisle, the existence of a happening/summoning is always evident as a repercussion of the protagonist’s intrusion. Demonstrated in the wicker statue scene at the end, Howie meets a fiery death as a sacrifice for the gods. This sacrifice is also a punishment for Howie’s negligence in coming to Summerisle. As Scovell notes, “The violence can be theological in origin, […] most ritualistic of ways, occasionally encompassing supernatural elements, where the group belief systems summon up something demonic or generally supernatural” (13). It is through these ritualistic summonings/happenings that the skewed beliefs of the islanders can manifest into a tangible threat for the protagonist which, in turn, presents itself as horror.
But how does this largely English conception and framework of folk horror relate to Get Out? In Get Out, the narrative revolves around a Black protagonist and photographer from Brooklyn, New York, named Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), who is invited by his White girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), for a weekend trip to her parents’ estate in Upstate New York. However, the horror unfolds when Chris gradually realizes that his weekend getaway is a trap orchestrated by Rose and the Armitage household to auction off his body. Forced into submission through hypnosis by Rose’s mother, Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener), Chris starts entering “The Sunken Place,” a subconscious realm where he holds cannot move. The Armitage family hypnotizes Chris to descend into The Sunken Place so that his body can be handed over the highest bidder in the auction for Chris’ body. Luckily, Chris escapes the family at the film’s end.
While emphasizing the experiences of the Black community through Chris’ unusual and, at times, subtly racist encounters, the narrative of Get Out shares many similarities with folk horror films such as The Wicker Man. Through Peele’s unique use of the folk horror genre’s tropes, it is apparent that a new subgenre of folk horror should be added to the genre’s overall classification — one that considers a wider range of political and social factors such as Black experience and trauma.
In examining Get Out as a folk horror film, specifically a Black folk horror, it is key to point out the film’s alignment with the chain. Looking at the landscape and isolation in the film, it is apparent that the Armitage’s residence in Upstate New York fits into the secluded and isolated narratives of locations like Summerisle. Seen in the scene of Chris and Rose driving and arriving at the house, the mise-en-scène depicts isolation through the constant passing of trees in the car window and the close-ups of Rose and Chris in the car. The camera stays mostly stationary on the drive in a position that only shows the passing trees, disorienting the audience as Rose takes Chris to the remote location of her parent’s house. This sense of remoteness on the car ride draws parallels to Howie’s plane ride to Summerisle. Focusing on landscape, both films evoke a caution as the protagonist detaches from mainland society. Additionally, the Armitage house is noticeably of, as Kimberly Brown puts it, “antebellum architectural design” (111) which she highlights to show the American rural suburb nature of the town. Although different from British ruralism, the distinct rural suburban location still holds significance when applied to the framework. As Scovell says, “[isolation] does not necessarily need to be of a [British] rural character as in our core trilogy […], it can occur viscerally in more urban forms as well” (12). The Armitage’s residence, a combination of the urban and the rural, merges into the rural suburban to evoke its own countercultural horror. Characterized by the vast acres of land, freshly mowed grass of the lawn, and lack of city, the mise-en-scène helps emphasize Black trauma through what Zadie Smith would call “black fears about white folk” (85). In this list of fears, she includes, “Houses with no other houses anywhere near them. [and a] Fondness for woods” (85). Slightly different from British fears of counterculture, the more modern rural suburb breeds the same uneasy feelings but in a Black audience that is more familiar with an urban environment.
Chris, the protagonist in Get Out, is objectified by an attendee of the Armitage family’s auction.
With the skewed morals of the Armitage family revealed throughout the film, it bares striking parallels to Howie’s slow realization of the twisted Summerisle inhabitants. Evident in the Armitage’s annual get-together scene, there is this recurring confrontation with counterculture discussed about earlier in the essay. In the scene, Chris is met with a wave of White folk, all in their mid to later years of life. Dressed elegantly, they begin touching Chris and objectify him for his Black characteristics. It is Chris’ more modern liberal perspective that clashes in this scene with the inherently more racist ideologies of the attendees who objectify and dehumanize Chris in favor of his Black physical qualities. Like the mindset of slaveowners, Peele depicts the attendees’ objectification and commodification of Chris to emphasize the continuation of past ideologies based on deep Black trauma as a result of slavery. It is this visceral confrontation with past ideas regarding slavery that makes the get-together scenes, so horrifyingly uncanny. As Brown states with Peele’s words, “Peele conceives Get Out as an allegory for slavery: ‘I realized that slavery was not something of the past.’” (107). It is this notion of the effects of slavery persisting today that produces an intensified sense of horror while watching the scene. As said by Sadiya Hartman, “If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America, it is […] because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago” (6). In Get Out, half of the horror is the realization that these social injustices are still happening today.
When comparing the two films, the summonings and occurrences in both align with the chain’s folk horror tropes. In Get Out, Chris undergoes hypnotism by Missy, leading to his involuntary confinement in The Sunken Place — a supernatural event analogous to Howie’s fiery sacrifice to the old gods of Summerisle. Both characters find themselves ensnared by the communities they visit, clearly showing Get Out’s place in the folk horror genre. The cinematography reinforces Chris’s helplessness in The Sunken Place, featuring a combination of long and extreme long shots that emphasize his helplessness. The dim and low-key lighting of The Sunken Place intensifies its void-like nature, symbolizing Chris’s entrapment. This entrapment mirrors Howie’s confinement in the wicker statue, accentuated by Hardy’s use of extreme long shots to magnify its size. It’s crucial to recognize that both films depict the effects of the summonings on their victims. In both Chris and Howie’s cases, close-ups are employed to illustrate the physical impact of the summonings on them. Chris forcibly begins crying, while Howie, facing death, curses the inhabitants of Summerisle for their sentencing.
Contrasting The Wicker Man, Get Out’s narrative plays on the skewed beliefs of the Armitage family to underscore a set of skewed beliefs that still exist today. The most horrifying part of the film is the reality of it. Importantly, Scovell says, “Folk Horror treats the past as a paranoid, skewed trauma; a trauma reflecting on the everyday of when these films in particular were made, especially when bringing past elements to sit with uncomfortable ease within the then-present day, as in Wicker” (Scovell 8). Although both films show us skewed traumas of the past, it is Get Out’s contemporary trauma that separates the two films. The Wicker Man presents the audience with a confrontation of past and present, while Get Out delves deeper, surpassing the boundaries of simply addressing the past and present. As Get Out focuses on the traumatic history of slavery and its effects felt to this day, its classification of folk horror is only a close match to current considerations of the genre.
To be more concrete, it is evident that a new subgenre such as Black folk horror is needed due to its more imaginative and conclusive understanding of the countercultural genre in terms of political and social matters. These matters being the issue of deep-rooted racism still left in the White community and the Black trauma it created and still creates. Through expressive interpretations of the folk horror genre that add to Scovell’s chain, Get Out is a reminder of folk horror’s more flexible and malleable nature, one not often considered due to the overwhelmingly prominent study of British folk horror.
Works Cited
Ashe, Bertram D., and Ilka Saal, ed. Slavery and the Post-Black Imagination. University of Washington Press, 2020.
Chambers, Jamie. “Troubling Folk Horror: Exoticism, Metonymy, and Solipsism in the ‘Unholy Trinity’ and Beyond.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 61 no. 2, 2022, p. 9-34.
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. Penguin Books 2003.
Hartman, Saidiya V. Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. Serpent’s Tail, 2021.
Scovell, Adam. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. Auteur Publishing, 2017.
Smith, Zadie. “Getting In and Out.” Harper’s Magazine, July 2017, pp. 84–89.