The films

WATCHobscure

Hellbender

Made by one family during lockdown for almost nothing, and it looks better than films with fifty times the budget.

obscure

Don't Go Near the Park

Cursed cave dwellers from 12,000 BC eating people in modern Los Angeles. Incoherent throughout.

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.

WATCHknown

The Blood on Satan's Claw

Something is dug up in a field and the village children form a cult. One third of the unholy trinity.

WATCHknown

The Love Witch

Shot on 35mm to look exactly like 1969, written and designed by one person, and very funny.

WATCHknown

You Won't Be Alone

A Macedonian witch story told as a Malick film, and it is about what it is to be a person.

WATCHknown

The Devil Rides Out

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

WATCHknown

Twins of Evil

Peter Cushing as a witch-hunter who is worse than the vampires, and the Collinson twins were Playboy's first.

WATCHknown

Witchfinder General

Vincent Price with the camp switched off, torturing people in English summer sunshine.

WATCHknown

Night of the Demon

The runic parchment, the smoke on the railway line, and a monster the producer added against the director's wishes.

WATCHknown

Inferno

The Suspiria sequel. Less coherent, more beautiful, and has the best underwater sequence Argento shot.

WATCHknown

Black Sunday

Bava could not afford colour and made the best-looking gothic ever shot. Barbara Steele's face did the rest.

known

The Devils

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

WATCHknown

Häxan

A 1922 essay film about witch trials that is still more radical than most documentaries.

WATCHknown

Viy

The only horror film made in the Soviet Union, and the last twenty minutes are extraordinary.

WATCHcanon

Suspiria

Not a remake so much as an argument with the original. Colder, longer, and about postwar German guilt.

WATCHcanon

Suspiria

Barely a plot and possibly the most beautiful horror film ever shot.

WATCHcanon

The Witch

Most of the dialogue comes from court records, then it commits fully to the supernatural.

WATCHcanon

Hereditary

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

WATCHcanon

Weapons

Seventeen children leave their houses at 2.17am. Cregger structures it as overlapping chapters and it pays off.