We Don't Go Back: An Interview with Howard David Ingham

“Folk horror comes at the same time as social unrest, and moves for rights, and nationalism and white supremacy—because they’re both responses to the same conditions.”

— Howard David Ingham

Since the release of Robert Eggers’ The Witch in 2015, the specter of folk horror has persistently haunted the periphery of American cinema. But folk horror as a genre is not a spirit that could truly ever be laid to rest, contending as it does with alienation, isolation, and racial tension. 

Though many movie lovers may first get into the folk horror subgenre through what is known as the Unholy Trinity—which consists of The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), Witchfinder General (1968), and The Wicker Man (1973)—the work of writer, educator, and editor Howard David Ingham has provided a veritable wealth of access for anyone interested in the old pagan ways that persist like ominous old-growth forest along the edges of cinema. In their book We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror, Ingham provides both a personal and well-informed overview of folk horror in TV and film, including films we might not consider to be part of the subgenre—for example, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). In 2018, Ingham’s book was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in nonfiction.

Over the summer, Ingham, who has their Master of Philosophy in Latin Literature from Swansea University, introduced a series of affordable, incredibly engaging seminars on a range of film-centered subjects from horror and spiritual practice to cults and brainwashing. Previously, Ingham’s work has also appeared in Ship of Fools, Big Issue, and they maintain a well-established presence in writing for tabletop roleplaying games, including work for Green Ronin. Ingham’s new book, Cult Cinema: Sects, Brainwashing and Bad Religion in Film and TV, is still forthcoming. 

What initially drew you to folk horror?

Well, I only really found out that “folk horror” was a thing in 2016, and it got my attention because it covered all my favourite horror films. I suppose that, if I were to reverse engineer my tastes, it would be partly because these films are the ones that most reflect my anxieties and fears, and also partly to do with the fact that I'm part of that “haunted generation” of people who grew up surrounded by a particularly spooky sort of British pop culture. And it's not as cut and dried as that; I mean that a lot of people think of the early 80s and they think of John Hughes movies and Bananarama, but I'm one of the people who, for whatever reason, thinks of terrifying public information ads, of creepy kids' TV characters like Mr. Noseybonk, of Bagpuss and Chocky.

In your seminar The Second Haunted Generation: The Return of Folk Horror, you mentioned some movies and shows that just aimed to check off the boxes of the subgenre. What elements make for a successful work?

My basic gold standard for “folk horror” is that it has to juxtapose the prosaic and the uncanny. Gothic fiction is separated by time and space from us, is set in a sort of fantasy world, and to some extent folk horror can be too, but it has to be down to earth. It has to have dirt under its fingernails, and it has to deal with the ordinary concerns of people. I like saying that folk horror is the horror of folk, but it's important, I think, because there has to be a grounding with it. It has to be about people, being people, and haunted while being people.

While folk horror can certainly be found across the world, what would you say are the biggest differentiating factors and ideas between US and UK folk horror?

I think that Britain is a place where no one spot is untrodden, and that there are no uninhabited places, only abandoned ones. And this means that there is no place that is potentially unhaunted. And because of that, the modern is as liable to be haunted as the ancient. You get technology being the vehicle of a summoning as much as teacups. In the USA and Canada, there's an older and very different culture that was there first that was shoved out of the way, a history of genocide. The idea of things built on the “Ancient Indian Burial Ground” (and even that name is an imperialist construct) has been part of American horror for as long as American horror was around—for example, Lovecraft even has an Indigenous Burial Place story, although in his one, the indigenous people retreated under the ground and maintain an Evil Civilisation or something (you do you, Other Howard). But those layers of societies, a lost society underneath, makes for a slightly different quality of haunting, even if it's never directly referenced. Backwoods horrors like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre might be white, but the colonial idea of “savagery” and of somehow returning to that squats over it.

Is there anything specific that brings about the appropriate cultural moment for the subgenre to flourish? (e.g. Rising nationalism, etc.)

I think mainly it's the sense that things aren't OK. The 1990s were a crappy time for folk horror and that was because in the UK we thought things were getting better—in the UK, we literally had a government get elected with the theme song “Things Can Only Get Better” and that whole Britpop wave, and in the US, Francis Fukuyama was telling everyone about the End of History. Since 9/11, things have got worse and worse. And when the big economic crash hit in about 2008, that's more or less when people started making folk horror again. Because a haunting, per Derrida, is the sense that history is unresolved, and there is unfinished business. We only have unfinished business when we think that things are not going well. Things are Not Going Well. So folk horror comes at the same time as social unrest, and moves for rights, and nationalism and white supremacy—because they're both responses to the same conditions.

What are some of the most significant subgenre evolutions you've seen? Is folk horror something that will always be waiting in the wings? 

I think the most significant evolutions are in American cinema, because America has the most active discourse about race right now. Jordan Peele's diptych of Us and Get Out made this particularly mordant, but I can't think of a more appropriate time for a remake of Candyman. But women's rights are a thing. Trans rights. Imperialism is coming back to bite us. I think we're going to see more of this “Identity Horror” coming up, films that deal with human identities—gender, race, disability, trauma—and it's going to hurt. 

For those new to watching folk horror, what are some key themes and ideas to consider? (Here, I'm thinking of those who watch The Wicker Man and fall in love with the idea of living with a homogenous pagan murder cult.) 

I think the main thing is that folk horror—especially new folk horror—often deals with issues of class and economic uncertainty. In The Wicker Man, the islanders might be fun and cheery and sex-positive, but they're also grooming kids and conspiring to sacrifice a human life for the sake of their economy, in the framework of a cult imposed on them from above by the wealthy, and if you think that isn't relevant in the Anglo-American world in 2020, you're really not paying attention. Even Midsommar has an underlying thematic thing about gender, race, and trauma. And let's not underplay trauma as a theme here. Our culture is currently in a collective state of traumatic distress, and that's a perfect breeding ground for folk horror. And let's face it, these cults are attractive; that's part of the point. Folk horror is popular with Nazis—they think the people of Summerisle are the goodies. But look at the people of Harga in Midsommar, with their constant talk about eugenics and breeding. They're not too different. These things hold a warning for us, because they are people like us. We have the risk of falling into those places. But then, that's central to folk horror: the fear of falling into wild, wrong-headed, and violent beliefs. It's why folk horror matters.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Interview by Laura Kemmerer

Laura tuned into horror with an interest in what these movies and books can tell us about ourselves and what societies fear. She is most interested in horror focused around the supernatural, folklore, the occult, Gothic themes, haunted media, landscape as a character, and hauntology (focusing on lost or broken futures).