Rural Remix

Your source for a deeper, richer story about life in rural places.

Each episode of Rural Remix spotlights unexpected rural stories and pushes back on stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding rural communities. If you love the Daily Yonder’s reporting and storytelling, Rural Remix is for you.

Rural Remix is a co-production of the Daily Yonder and the Rural Assembly, both projects of the nonprofit Center for Rural Strategies.

Where do horror movies happen? Small towns, dark forests, cornfields, and farmhouses have each been the locations for iconic scary films. But why are rural settings so popular, and how do these choices affect the areas represented? The Rural Horror Picture Show is a five-part series that explores the often-flawed, but always interesting, depiction of rural people and places in horror movies.

Whether you love scary movies or can’t bear to watch, you’ll find something to enjoy in this examination of horror history — from Texas Chainsaw and Deliverance to the Blair Witch and Children of the Corn.

In our first episode, we look at urban fears about the country, and rural fears about the city. Which is scarier, and should we take more issue with the tropes, or the inversions of them?

Films discussed include “Jennifer’s Body” (2009), “Pearl” (2022), “Frankenstein” (1931), and “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” (2010).

Continuing on from our first episode, we zoom in to a specific kind of “urbanoia.” Join us for a closer look at a set of iconic movies that made a horror trope out of an over-the-top stereotype, introducing us to an infamous class of villain: the killer hillbilly and his degenerate rural family. As some Appalachians and rural people seek to reclaim power and pride in the word hillbilly, what are we to do with the killbillies?

Films discussed include “Deliverance” (1972), “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974), and “The Hills Have Eyes” (1977).

Sometimes the monster isn’t so literal, and deeper fears take center stage: isolation, grief, disillusionment, despair. In these cases, rural landscapes often play a supporting role. In our third episode, we turn our attention to the fear of isolation — both physical and emotional —and how it’s connected to portrayals of grief in horror movies.

Films discussed include “Midsommar” (2019), “The Edge of the Knife” (2018), and “Deliverance” (1972).

No examination of rural horror would be complete without talking about folk horror. Superstitions about witchcraft and the occult hearken back to the country’s pastoral, Puritan roots. We dig into the sub-genre and how it uses rural places to illustrate modern tensions between science and the supernatural.

Films discussed include “The Children of the Corn” (1984), “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), and the documentary “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched” (2021).

Was Burkittsville, Maryland ever the same after the “Blair Witch?” What about the Texas town that played host to the “Chainsaw Massacre?”

Dawn breaks and we conclude our series with some reflections on the lasting legacy of rural horror. How have the places featured in popular films been affected by their depictions on screen? And what do the tropes and shorthand used by horror filmmakers continue to reveal about the world around us?