If Midsommar got under your skin, the good news is that European cinema has been doing folk horror longer, weirder, and sometimes even more effectively. Here are the films worth watching next, all with confirmed English subs.
First, What Made Midsommar Work
It was not just the gore. It was the dread baked into rituals, daylight, and community. The horror felt old, like something borrowed from a tradition that predates jump scares by centuries.
That specific feeling has a name: folk horror. And Europe, unsurprisingly, has been making it for decades. Here is where to start.
The One That Basically Invented the Template
A Scottish island, a missing girl, a police officer who should have stayed home. The horror here is communal belief treated as completely reasonable by everyone except you. If Midsommar felt like a nightmare you couldn't logic your way out of, this is where that idea was born.
This is the one you show people who still think folk horror needs a monster. It does not. The community is the monster. Fifty years later, that choice still lands.
Slow Burn That Pays Off Hard
A woman returns to the crumbling orphanage where she grew up, and her son starts vanishing into something the house has been holding onto. The grief underneath this one is genuine and it makes the horror worse.
A quiet, bullied boy befriends the pale girl who just moved in next door. Cold, lonely, and genuinely unsettling in a way that creeps up on you rather than announces itself.
Both of these films earn their haunting moments. Nothing is cheap. The mood is built over time and you feel it accumulating.
For the Viewers Who Wanted Midsommar Even More Brutal
A lifelong vegetarian starts veterinary school and discovers a hunger she cannot explain. It uses initiation rituals and institutional hazing the way Midsommar uses Swedish midsummer tradition: as a container for something much darker about identity and desire.
One location, one night, relentless. French extreme horror at its most uncompromising. Not folk horror in the traditional sense, but it shares the same commitment to discomfort as an atmosphere rather than a single shock.
France's extreme horror wave from the 2000s is worth knowing about. These films are not for everyone, but if Midsommar's violence didn't make you flinch, these will test that.
The Ones With That Ritual, Investigator-Walks-Into-Danger Energy
A film student researching snuff films for her thesis pulls on a thread that should have been left alone. Director Alejandro Amenábar built an entire career on this kind of slow-tightening dread.
A hitman takes a job that seems straightforward and ends up somewhere he cannot come back from. Starts as a crime film, finishes as something you will be processing for days. The folk horror turn is earned and genuinely shocking.
Both films use genre disguises. They start somewhere familiar and walk you somewhere else entirely. That is exactly what good folk horror does.
If You Want Atmospheric Horror With Real Visual Style
Dario Argento's giallo horror is more stylized than folk horror, but the dread of ritual, of patterns that cannot be broken, runs all the way through it. The color and sound design are unlike anything else.
A marriage disintegrates in Cold War Berlin and whatever is happening to the wife is not psychological, or not only psychological. Isabelle Adjani's performance is the kind you do not forget. This one is strange, committed, and completely its own thing.
These two are harder to categorize, which is part of why they hold up. Great horror resists easy description. Both of these do.
The Lighter Side (Yes, There Is One)
Found footage about a government agent whose job is to manage Norway's troll population, which is exactly as entertaining as it sounds. The folk mythology is taken completely seriously by the film, which makes it work. A good palette cleanser after something brutal.
Not every folk horror film needs to leave you staring at the ceiling. This one is genuinely fun, and the Norwegian landscape does most of the heavy lifting.
If any of these sound like your speed, the full breakdown for each film including where to stream, content tags, and runtime is waiting for you on ReelBridge. Start with The Wicker Man's full profile if you want to go in order of influence, or check Raw's details if you want the most direct Midsommar energy first.