Southern Gothic Settings

Flannery O'Conner makes it sound terrifying to cross into any state below Maryland and it's beautiful. Across her work, the way she builds worlds around the American Deep South has the same grotesque nature that some macabre victorian literature has while also making it feel real enough that it's unsettling. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" holds and eerie feeling within me throughout. I think the piece works well as a strong introduction to O'Connor's style. It's certainly a lot to analyze the first time around. As far as the Thriller and Horror genres are concerned, this work alone seems to contribute a lot to a lot of popular horror tropes. For example, the Misfit is like a mix of a Western antagonist out of a Clint Eastwood film mixed with the chaotic motive to destroy without much rhyme or reasoning to it. For the setting, some of the most popular examples of the Deep South trope are The Hills Have Eyes series of films along with the Wrong Turn franchise. Both take place in secluded areas of the south such as mountains and forests respectively.  The tones share a lot of similarities with O'Connor's. Now this could be an issue of collective unconscious or direct inspiration. Either way she has a strong foundation

Abandoned Gas Station from The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
As soon as I read "RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBAQUE" I imagined something similar to this.