FOLKLORİK KORKU SİNEMASINDA DOĞANIN ÖTEKİLEŞTİRİLMESİ
OTHERALIZATION OF NATURE IN FOLK HORROR CINEMA

Summary/Abstract: Folk horror cinema, as a subgenre that deals with folkloric elements within horror cinema conventions, was initially characterized by the 1968 films Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and 1973 The Wicker Man. It can be seen that similar themes attributed to the folk horror subgenre are repeated in a number of British horror films, especially those shot in the late 1960s and 1970s. Interest in the subgenre has increased again with a series of recent films, and these narratives, nourished by rural landscapes, superstitions and mythological stories, have allowed contemporary horror cinema to address the frightening and interesting aspects of folkloric elements. These films have a deep relationship with the folklore, superstitions and folk stories of certain cultures and communities, and the uncannyness of nature constitutes one of the basic themes of folk horror films. Rather than classifying similar films that repeat these themes as a subgenre, the study aims to reveal the ways in which nature is established and represented as the other in recent examples of folk horror cinema. In these films, which focus especially on stories of isolation in rural areas, the relationship between nature and humans is handled through horror elements. For this purpose, the forms of representation of nature and rural in folk horror cinema in the films The Witch (2015), The Ritual (2017), Midsommar (2019), Gretel and Hansel (2020), Antlers (2021), Lamb (2021) and Men (2022). It was examined with a film analysis model based on genre film criticism, which includes the categories of Film Style, Social Context and Industrial Context, and it was seen that the patriarchal and anthropocentric perspective on the relationship between nature, women and civilization was reproduced in these films.

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