Horror lies underneath

‘Klaps’ Newspaper Published on 26.09.2026

Wilczyca

For years, words “Polish” and “horror” next to each other were enough to start off a whole range of defensive reactions. Disbelief, a smile, sometimes leniency. Because Polish cinema can be heavy, social, historical, about war, preferably mixed with November’s ankle-deep mud. But, to scare? And for real?

Julia Henel

One of the most important points on this rather modest map of our native terror is The Wolf by Marek Piestrak. The film, shot in 1982 and distributed in 1983, is a period drama about a curse, revenge from beyond the grave and a woman coming back as a wolf. Today, it may spark off different emotions than forty years ago, but the fact that such a film was produced in the Polish People’s Republic, is significant. It has shown that Polish history, local beliefs, a manor house and a forest can serve as a horror material. Importing a haunted house from English moorlands isn’t necessary. Taking a look into our own basement is enough.

The problem is that after The Wolf no permanent scaring industry was established. Horror appeared rather unexpectedly, like an uninvited guest. Came in, caused confusion, and left again for a few years. That’s why, when today we hear the phrase “Polish horror”, a warning lamp turns on. We don’t ask “Will it be scary?”. Our first question is “Won’t it be funny?”

“I think that we are slowly quitting being ashamed of horror”, says Bartosz M. Kowalski - “For many years there has been a belief in Poland that genre cinema is something less serious by definition, something worse and if a film has artistic ambitions, it would be best not to call it a horror too easily.”

“We don’t have a genre cinema industry yet, in the sense of ones existing in many other countries,” he adds. “Here, every horror is a bit of an individual experiment.”

It’s hard to find a better example than his filmography. Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight is a slasher. A group of youngsters, wilderness, a murderer and more bodies. Hellhole makes towards occultism and monastery terror. Night Silence uses horror elements to tell a story about old age, loneliness and passing. 13 Days till Summer locks young characters in a house and mixes slasher with home invasion. We can’t build a consistent “Polish horror style” out of this. But is it really a flaw?

Kowalski acknowledges the vicious circle we have been stuck in for many years. For some institutions, horror is too commercial to be considered artistic cinema. For producers and distributors, it’s sometimes too niche to be treated as a safe investment.

“We don’t make horrors because there are no on the market, and the market doesn’t develop because there are no horrors”, says the director.

It’s even more interesting that young filmmakers don’t run away from this genre. Conversely, they jump right in, often by their first feature film, without many years of a safe run-up. And they don’t want only to scare.

Agata Trzebuchowska takes horror and makes it her debut. SICK is a coming-of-age story - a sixteen-year-old Maks spends his summer holidays in Masuria, together with his sister Emma, looking after their ill grandmother. A place well-known from their childhood, suddenly stops being a safe haven. Adolescence mixes with corporality, desire, shame and taboo. There isn’t a classic beast jumping from behind the door. A monster is born somewhere in between the characters.

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Trzebuchowska doesn’t want to give her film just one label.

“I wouldn’t describe this film as horror", says the director. “One label isn’t enough. This film doesn’t limit to only one genre. It goes beyond and connects different styles, traditions and registers of the cinema. Of course, we use genre frames in a specific manner and that was our objective since the beginning. Incest is burdened with huge taboo and because of that I wanted to facilitate viewer’s contact with it. I thought that using genre narrative fame would make such a meeting and approach easier.

It’s one of the most interesting directions of modern on-screen terror. Horror doesn’t need to be the goal. It can be a transport.

Katarzyna Łubik, who played in SICK, says that actors on set didn’t work with a thought “remember, we’re acting in a horror film” in mind. They focused on relations and tension between the characters. Later, when describing the effect, she says something that summarises Trzebuchowska’s film the best: “This horror is somehow underneath”.

And it really is. It sits under the table. Hangs in the corner, beneath the ceiling. It looks at us from the other side of the room. It doesn’t need zombies or demons, because the thing that turns out to be more concerning is what we wouldn’t like to experience in our own families.

ÒPI by Marta Giec goes a similar way but using different tools. The director reaches out for Kashubian beliefs and Polish demonic beings, inspired by, first and foremost Łukasz Kozak’s book Upiór. The book itself has Kashubian roots so the story isn’t a folk decoration glued to it but rather an attempt to get into its own background.

The most interesting is what Giec finds in those beliefs. It’s not another version of Dracula in an embroidered vest.

“World pop culture has its vampire, we have our Upiór”, explains Giec. “We have an image of a vampire in our minds - an aristocrat, sneaking off in the middle of the night, just killing one person after another. Our Upiór rather scavenges on members of its family, its community. For me, the discovery of Polish “upioryzm” was a discovery of a beautiful terror element, that is, a fear of our close ones.

Does a manual for Polish horror look like that? Maybe instead of checking whether we can make an American slasher, we should dig into folktales more often. To family homes, blocks of flats, the countryside, and grandparents’ cottage. We have never lacked material for scaring.

“It’s our time, for Godness’ sake”, thought Giec observing the popularity of modern psychological horror and folk horror. “It’s time for making something like this here, in Poland, but with more background.”
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ÒPI is not an ideal proof that we already know how to do that. The film doesn’t use the potential of its great starting point but fights back with the atmosphere and domestic fears, such as family and religiousness. We also have an upiór that wasn’t taken out of the world pop culture catalogue. However, all of this is lost under the layer of scream and blood.

But even such a failure serves something.

If Polish horror is to stop being an event on the rule “Look, we made a horror!” unsuccessful films also have to be made. Mediocre slashers, overcomplicated folk horrors and productions, after which someone will ask “What the hell I just watched?”. Only then the genre stops being an exception and becomes a part of cinematography.

Trzebuchowska, although not a fan of horror herself, says that it’s a “fresh, fledging” genre and attempts to try making it not always satisfy the audience. Perhaps we expect too much from these films too fast? Every Polish horror has to be a sort of an ambassador of all future Polish horrors. If it doesn’t work out, an argument “The Poles are not able to do it” comes right back.

Yet no one after a very weak Gigli (2003), with its 6 Razzies, announces the death of the American romantic comedy.

Polish horror still doesn’t have the comfort of being just a film. It has to constantly prove that it has a right to exist.

That’s why the most interesting thing isn’t whether SICK, ÒPI, 13 Days Till Summer or even the next horror film would be a masterpiece. More interesting is the fact that more people even want to take the risk. That the debuting filmmakers don’t treat this genre as an embarrassing shelf in a VHS rental shop but as a fully-fledged storytelling language. About adolescence, old age, family and religion. About violence, desire and all things, we are afraid to say out loud.

Kowalski notices that a modern viewer doesn’t expect only fear from a horror film. They want to be surprised by the form, theme, tone or perspective. Horror can be simultaneously a drama, dark comedy, social cinema or a very personal story. He also adds “Polish cinema hasn’t used the whole potential yet”

Yet.

Because while looking at last attempts, it’s hard not to notice a movement. A bit shaky, sometimes ending with a fall on the face but still a movement.

Over four decades have passed from The Wolf. We still don’t have a domestic horror factory and the phrase “Polish horror” can still cause a little twist of suspicion. But more and more filmmakers instead of convincing audiences that their film “isn’t a horror exactly”, just look at the genre and think, what to do with it.

And maybe that’s how a tradition starts.

Not from a one masterpiece, which would suddenly prove to everyone that the Poles can scare, though. But from a right to more attempts.

Even after which, instead of screaming because of fear, we want to do that for an entirely different reason.