I wrote a book about food, landscape, and agriculture in folk horror movies called Frightful Harvest. It’s a scholarly book that looks at folk horror films through an ecocritical and economic lens. The term folk horror has lately been applied retroactively to titles from the 1970s while simultaneously experiencing a renaissance in the 2010s, two periods of economic and political turmoil defined by distinct environmental movements. I also really like spooky witchcraft and nature spirits defending the woodlands. I think ghosts are pretty neat.

I also made a list of all the movies that made it into the book here on Letterboxd, in no particular order.

Wonder why witchcraft is such a common horror movie trope? Curious about why hillbillies became villainous in mainstream movies? Did the Great Recession make you want to get back to the land, or did the pandemic make you envy the working schedule of medieval peasants, or does cooking with organic ingredients feel more spiritual than it should? Is the real monster just capitalism? This book covers all of these questions, and more! I can’t guarantee it’ll make you happy, but I can guarantee it won’t make you sadder than you already are; believe me, I tried.

Preorder now from McFarland Books. Also, you should always order books directly through publishers whenever possible. Third party distributors take a bigger cut of writers’ profits after production costs, in some cases so their owners can further destroy the planet by taking joyrides in space. If you need to use a third party, use Bookshop.org instead of the big evil one that hurts writers and booksellers alike. Don’t support rich people who hate you for sport. Make them hate you because you have control of your material conditions instead.