The Winter of Folk Horror, Part 3: 80s Hoodoo/Voodoo & Eve's Bayou, Too (Angel Heart, The Believers, The Serpent and the Rainbow & Eve's Bayou)

Send us Fan MailAh, it's time for a different kind of folk horror. Hide your pet chickens and goats, because we have four movies to discuss, involving Hoodoo, Voodoo, Santeria and maybe a taste of Satanism, as well.  Harry Angel, a private detective in 1955, is hired to track down an old crooner, who happens to owe a pretty serious debt. But Harry soon finds himself becoming the prime suspect for a series of murders, with unfamiliar religions and his own past bearing down on him, in Angel Heart (1987). A police psychiatrist becomes involved in an investigation of a number of cult-related child murders. Seeking allies and answers from the world of Santeria, he soon discovers that his own son may be the next target, in The Believers (1987). Dr. Alan, an anthropologist, is sent to Haiti to obtain a powder used to create zombies, in hopes of utilizing it as an anesthetic in modern medicine. But while on the trail of the powder, a sinister bokor wants to add Dr. Alan to his collection of souls, in Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). And then from there, it's a tale of infidelity and deceit, with voodoo lingering in the shadows. Experience the Southern Gothic world of Eve's Bayou (1997).