Analysing Existing Folk Horror Taglines

Each of the different elements of my marketing campaign will feature a tagline, and to keep a consistent sense of branding across the campaign I am going to use the same tagline in my trailers, my poster and on my social media page.

I suspect that my tagline will make reference to both the plot of my film but also to the folk horror genre, but I want to check if there are any patterns and consistencies in taglines for existing folk horror films.

I have taken the taglines from a number of posters for films from the folk horror genre and I have made a note of any patterns, the ways in which the taglines reference the plot of the films and whether they indicate the genre.

'The Blair Witch Project'

'Gretel and Hansel'

'Hereditary'

'Kill List'

'Lamb'

'Lord of Misrule'

'Men'

'Midsommar'

'The Ritual'

'Starve Acre'

'The Wicker Man' (2006)

'The Wicker Man' (1973)

'The Wicker Man' (2006)

'The Wicker Man' (2006)

'The Witch'

'The Witch'

'Witchfinder General'

'You Won't Be Alone'

There are a number of clear patterns in the taglines for films from the folk horror genre including:

• the use of words or phrases that instantly indicate the broader horror genre - 'evil', 'wicked', 'fears', 'buried', 'terror' and 'haunts'
• words and phrases which are more directly associated with the folk horror sub-genre - 'folktale', 'sacrifices', 'festivities', 'harvest', 'nature' and 'secret'
• direct reference to the spectator through the use of 'you' and 'you're'
• references to rituals and ceremonies
• the most effective ones are relatively short
• often contain a sense of mystery or enigma

Now that I have a better idea of how taglines work, and the patterns that appear in taglines from the folk horror sub-genre, I will use these findings to develop my own tagline, which I want to reflect my genre but also the plot of my film.