The films

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Attachment

A Danish-Jewish folk horror about a dybbuk, a mother, and a relationship the mother will not permit.

WATCHcult

Evilspeak

Clint Howard, a military academy, a computer and a lot of pigs. Better than it has any right to be.

WATCHcult

A Dark Song

A grieving mother and an occultist doing a months-long ritual properly. The tedium is deliberate.

WATCHcult

Alucarda

Mexican nunsploitation with an actual argument, and everybody in it screams for eighty minutes.

WATCHcult

Incantation

A Taiwanese found-footage film built around a curse the film itself tries to pass to you.

WATCHcult

It Lives Inside

An Indian-American teenager unleashes a demon from Hindu folklore while trying to assimilate.

WATCHcult

The Dark and the Wicked

Bryan Bertino's bleakest film. Two siblings return to the family farm as their father dies and something takes the household apart.

WATCHcult

The House of the Devil

Ti West made a 1983 film in 2009, on 16mm, and the first hour is a girl walking around a house alone.

WATCHcult

When Evil Lurks

Argentinian, merciless, and it establishes early that the film will not spare anybody. It means it.

WATCHknown

Saint Maud

A palliative nurse decides she has been called. Morfydd Clark is terrifying and the last shot is a gut punch.

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The Blackcoat's Daughter

Oz Perkins' debut. Glacial, wintry, and the timeline is doing something you will only spot late.

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The Sentinel

A model moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that turns out to be the gateway to Hell, guarded by a blind priest.

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The Devil Rides Out

Christopher Lee as the hero for once, and the best script Hammer ever filmed.

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The Medium

Thai-Korean, a documentary crew following a shaman, and the last twenty minutes are relentless.

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Host

Shot over lockdown on Zoom in twelve weeks, runs 56 minutes, and is better than it has any right to be.

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Verónica

A Madrid teenager holds a séance during a solar eclipse and brings something home. Loosely based on a real police file.

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Exhuma

Two shamans and two geomancers exhume a cursed grave in Korea, and what is under it is worse than the curse.

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Late Night with the Devil

A 1977 Halloween talk show broadcast, live, going wrong. David Dastmalchian finally gets a lead.

WATCHknown

The Serpent and the Rainbow

Wes Craven in Haiti, adapting a real ethnobotanist's account of the drug behind zombie folklore.

WATCHknown

Bring Her Back

The Philippou brothers' second, and considerably harder to sit through than the first. Sally Hawkins is the reason.

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REC 2

The sequel picks up minutes after the first, sends a SWAT team into the sealed building, and reframes the whole outbreak.

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Possession

A divorce film with a tentacle in it. Adjani's U-Bahn scene is the most extreme acting on this site.

known

The Devils

Ken Russell's best film, cut in every territory it has ever played, and still not properly released.

WATCHknown

The First Omen

A prequel nobody wanted that turned out to be the best-directed studio horror of its year.

WATCHknown

The Wailing

Two and a half hours, and it withholds whether the shaman is helping right until the end.

WATCHknown

Immaculate

Nunsploitation with a real budget. The last shot is a single unbroken take and it is the reason to watch.

WATCHknown

Pet Sematary

King wrote the novel and thought it too bleak to publish. The film keeps the bleakness.

WATCHcanon

Talk to Me

An embalmed hand, a ninety-second rule, and teenagers filming it. The Philippou brothers' first feature.

WATCHcanon

Longlegs

Marketed better than almost any horror film this decade. The first hour earns it, the last act is arguable.

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Prince of Darkness

The second of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, and it is quantum physics as a book of the dead.

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Evil Dead Rise

Moves the cabin to a Los Angeles tower block. The cheese grater is the sequence people talk about.

WATCHcanon

Smile

A curse that passes by witnessing. Cheap scares, but the mechanism is sound and the ending commits.

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The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Structured as a courtroom drama, which is a smarter frame than the subgenre usually gets.

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Angel Heart

Mickey Rourke hunts a missing crooner for a client called Louis Cyphre, and the answer is the worst possible one.

WATCHcanon

Hereditary

A film about grief that turns out to be a film about a cult. Toni Collette should have won everything.

WATCHcanon

Sinister

The super-8 reels are the film. Everything between them is a man in an office not turning the lights on.