WATCHcultA Dark Song
2016 · Ireland/UK · 100m
A grieving mother and an occultist doing a months-long ritual properly. The tedium is deliberate.
1973 onward · 43 films
Possession / Demonic
Something else is using the body. Catholic in origin, now largely a genre of ritual.
Possession horror is Catholic architecture applied to the body. It needs an authority (usually a priest), a victim (usually young and female), and a set of rules that both sides accept.
The Exorcist and its damage
The Exorcist (1973) was the highest-grossing horror film ever made at the time, was nominated for ten Academy Awards, and caused fainting and ambulances outside cinemas. Friedkin got the performances partly by firing rifles on set and physically jerking actors on harnesses, which is now discussed more than the film's actual craft.
Its influence was mostly bad. For thirty years the subgenre made the same film with a smaller budget: the rotating head, the guttural voice, the crucifix. Italy produced dozens.
The interesting exceptions
Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) is about a real case, the Loudun possessions of 1634, and argues that the possession was political theatre from the start. It has been cut in every territory it has ever played and the complete version has still not had a proper release.
Zulawski's Possession (1981) is nominally about a marriage breaking down in Berlin. Isabelle Adjani's miscarriage scene in the U-Bahn tunnel took her years to recover from and is the single most extreme piece of acting in this section of the site. It was on the DPP list, which is absurd on any reading.
The modern turn
Since 2005 the framing has moved from religion to trauma and medicine. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is structured as a courtroom drama. The question stopped being "is the demon real" and became "what happens to a girl when a community decides she is possessed", which is more frightening and less filmable.
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The whole shelf
Filter these →WATCHcult
WATCHcultAlucarda
1977 · Mexico · 85m
Mexican nunsploitation with an actual argument, and everybody in it screams for eighty minutes.
WATCHcanonAngel Heart
1987 · USA/UK · 113m
Mickey Rourke hunts a missing crooner for a client called Louis Cyphre, and the answer is the worst possible one.
WATCHobscureAttachment
2022 · DK · 105m
A Danish-Jewish folk horror about a dybbuk, a mother, and a relationship the mother will not permit.
WATCHknownBring Her Back
2025 · Australia · 104m
The Philippou brothers' second, and considerably harder to sit through than the first. Sally Hawkins is the reason.
WATCHcanonEvil Dead II
1987 · USA · 85m
Half remake, half sequel, and it turns the first film into slapstick without losing the nastiness.
WATCHcanonEvil Dead Rise
2023 · New Zealand · 97m
Moves the cabin to a Los Angeles tower block. The cheese grater is the sequence people talk about.
WATCHcultEvilspeak
1981 · USA · 89m
Clint Howard, a military academy, a computer and a lot of pigs. Better than it has any right to be.
WATCHknownExhuma
2024 · South Korea · 134m
Two shamans and two geomancers exhume a cursed grave in Korea, and what is under it is worse than the curse.
WATCHcanonHereditary
2018 · USA · 127m
A film about grief that turns out to be a film about a cult. Toni Collette should have won everything.
WATCHknownHost
2020 · UK · 56m
Shot over lockdown on Zoom in twelve weeks, runs 56 minutes, and is better than it has any right to be.
WATCHknownImmaculate
2024 · USA/Italy · 89m
Nunsploitation with a real budget. The last shot is a single unbroken take and it is the reason to watch.
WATCHcultIncantation
2022 · TW · 111m
A Taiwanese found-footage film built around a curse the film itself tries to pass to you.
WATCHcanonInsidious
2010 · USA/Canada · 102m
Wan's best jump scares and the film that built the modern haunting industry. The Further is silly and it works.
WATCHcultIt Lives Inside
2023 · USA/Canada · 99m
An Indian-American teenager unleashes a demon from Hindu folklore while trying to assimilate.
WATCHknownLate Night with the Devil
2023 · Australia/AE · 92m
A 1977 Halloween talk show broadcast, live, going wrong. David Dastmalchian finally gets a lead.
WATCHcanonLonglegs
2024 · USA · 101m
Marketed better than almost any horror film this decade. The first hour earns it, the last act is arguable.
WATCHknownPet Sematary
1989 · USA · 103m
King wrote the novel and thought it too bleak to publish. The film keeps the bleakness.
WATCHcanonPrince of Darkness
1987 · USA · 102m
The second of Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, and it is quantum physics as a book of the dead.
WATCHknownREC 2
2009 · Spain · 85m
The sequel picks up minutes after the first, sends a SWAT team into the sealed building, and reframes the whole outbreak.
WATCHcanonRosemary's Baby
1968 · USA · 137m
A film about a woman whose body and doctor and husband are all making decisions without her.
WATCHknownSaint Maud
2019 · UK · 84m
A palliative nurse decides she has been called. Morfydd Clark is terrifying and the last shot is a gut punch.
WATCHcanonSinister
2012 · USA/UK · 105m
The super-8 reels are the film. Everything between them is a man in an office not turning the lights on.
WATCHcanonSmile
2022 · USA · 115m
A curse that passes by witnessing. Cheap scares, but the mechanism is sound and the ending commits.
WATCHcanonTalk to Me
2022 · Australia · 94m
An embalmed hand, a ninety-second rule, and teenagers filming it. The Philippou brothers' first feature.
WATCHknownThe Blackcoat's Daughter
2015 · USA/Canada · 93m
Oz Perkins' debut. Glacial, wintry, and the timeline is doing something you will only spot late.
WATCHcanonThe Conjuring
2013 · USA · 112m
Old-fashioned, extremely well made, and the reason there are now nine of these.
WATCHcultThe Dark and the Wicked
2020 · USA · 93m
Bryan Bertino's bleakest film. Two siblings return to the family farm as their father dies and something takes the household apart.
WATCHknownThe Devil Rides Out
1968 · UK · 95m
Christopher Lee as the hero for once, and the best script Hammer ever filmed.
WATCHcanonThe Evil Dead
1981 · USA · 85m
Prosecuted dozens of times and won more often than it lost. Raimi was 21 and it shows in the best way.
WATCHknownThe First Omen
2024 · USA · 120m
A prequel nobody wanted that turned out to be the best-directed studio horror of its year.
WATCHcultThe House of the Devil
2009 · USA · 95m
Ti West made a 1983 film in 2009, on 16mm, and the first hour is a girl walking around a house alone.
WATCHknownThe Medium
2021 · Thailand/South Korea · 131m
Thai-Korean, a documentary crew following a shaman, and the last twenty minutes are relentless.
WATCHcanonThe Omen
1976 · USA/UK · 106m
A film about a man realising his son is not his. Jerry Goldsmith won the Oscar and earned it.
WATCHknownThe Sentinel
1977 · USA · 92m
A model moves into a Brooklyn brownstone that turns out to be the gateway to Hell, guarded by a blind priest.
WATCHknownThe Serpent and the Rainbow
1988 · USA · 98m
Wes Craven in Haiti, adapting a real ethnobotanist's account of the drug behind zombie folklore.
WATCHknownThe Wailing
2016 · South Korea · 156m
Two and a half hours, and it withholds whether the shaman is helping right until the end.
WATCHknownVerónica
2017 · Spain · 105m
A Madrid teenager holds a séance during a solar eclipse and brings something home. Loosely based on a real police file.
WATCHcultWhen Evil Lurks
2023 · AR/USA · 99m
Argentinian, merciless, and it establishes early that the film will not spare anybody. It means it.