Musical dismemberment.
An ancient forest god.
Masked orgies.
Cults can be pretty terrifying things, but cinema is home to some of the most chilling
stories ever told.
The question is… dare you keep watching?
The Manson Family is perhaps the most infamous cult in United States history.
Made up mostly of young women who fell for the charms of leader Charles Manson, several
members of the cult committed a killing spree in August 1969.
While most movies about the Manson Family focus on Manson and the deaths themselves,
Charlie Says depicts the experiences of the women in the cult.
Based on the books The Family, by Ed Sanders, and The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van
Houten, by Karlene Faith, the movie follows Leslie Van Houten from the time before she
met Charlie to her eventual spiritual redemption in prison.
What makes Charlie Says so interesting is how it shows how easy it is to fall in line
with cult thinking.
The young women in the story are desperate for love and affection, and the allure of
Manson's "family" makes them willing to do anything.
"You should all feel proud, and why should you all feel proud, why?"
"Because we're already living like revolutionaries."
Director Mary Harron never makes these women into caricatures, though, instead giving them
moments of humanity and horror.
She also keeps Manson in the background, letting the victims' stories take center stage.
By presenting the tale from a new perspective, Charlie Says offers a fresh and thought-provoking
look at one of America's most sordid stories.
Some people will do anything to achieve their dreams — even giving up their souls to the
forces of evil.
That's the premise behind Starry Eyes, which stars Alexandra Essoe as Sarah, an aspiring
actress working a dead-end job at a Hooters-style casual restaurant.
Sarah suffers through demeaning auditions, she's treated poorly by her supposed friends,
and she's feeling pretty awful about everything in general.
So, when a deal with the devil comes knocking, Sarah must decide how much she's willing to
lose in order to win.
As it turns out, the cult of fame is an actual cult, full of famous producers and actors
who made the same choice as Sarah.
Sarah's transformation from wallflower to starlet is stunning, but it comes with some
unfortunate side-effects; Starry Eyes takes quite a few turns throughout its 98-minute
runtime, dabbling in body horror, psychological horror, and straight-up slasher-movie action.
What if you weren't in a cult, but knew that one was destined to worship you?
Rob Zombie's The Lords of Salem asks that very question.
Sheri Moon Zombie plays Heidi, a radio DJ in Salem, Massachusetts.
After a mysterious fan sends Heidi an old, creepy record, she seeks the help of Francis
Mathias, an expert on the Salem witch trials.
As it turns out, not only is Heidi's past intertwined with the trials, but she's also
the subject of prophecy that could lead to the birth of Satan.
While Zombie's earlier films are gory odes to schlock, The Lords of Salem takes its subject
matter a bit more seriously.
There's a lot of reverence for older cult films here, as well as literary and genre
history.
Sheri Moon in particular shines as Heidi, who retreats into an old addiction to escape
the worsening witchy happenings.
The movie is a slow burn, too, but stick with it; it's absolutely worth hanging on for the
killer climax.
The House of the Devil begins with the claim that the movie is based on a true story.
Thankfully, it's almost entirely fiction.
The movie is loosely based on the "satanic panic" that gripped the U.K. and America in
the '80s, which was a moral hysteria that argued that murderous Satanists lived among
us.
"This is the teaching of the occult.
This is exactly what we were introduced into in Star Wars and E.T."
In The House of the Devil, the story is slight, following a young college student who takes
on a babysitting job for extra money and experiences some weird goings-on.
There are strange phone calls, odd sounds, and, eventually, a cult tries to sacrifice
the woman to the devil in the attic.
It's bare-bones at best.
The story doesn't matter though.
Here, the aesthetic is everything.
This 2009 movie perfectly mimics the style, dialogue, and outfits of early '80s cinema,
to the point that it's almost hard to believe how recently the film was made.
It's as if director Ti West distilled dozens of movies from that era into a single experience.
If you have any interest in '80s cult films or the satanic panic at all, this is one you
have to check out.
Ken Russell's historical horror opus The Devils isn't easy to track down, but it's more than
worth the effort.
The controversial film is based on the downfall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic
priest accused of witchcraft after a number of nuns allegedly became possessed in Loudun,
France.
In the movie, Grandier is having an affair with a younger woman.
Unbeknownst to him, however, the abbess of the local convent is infatuated with him.
She will stop at nothing to get her way, even if it means committing blasphemy.
It's nearly impossible to find an uncut version of the film, although censored versions are
occasionally available to stream.
And that's no surprise, either: The Devils has been called one of the most controversial
films of all time by a number of critics and fans.
It's a brutal, shocking film about the depravity of those who are supposed to be divine.
Russell's direction is sublime, with beautiful cinematography and art design.
The Devils might contain some intensely disturbing content, but it sure is beautiful to look
at.
Red State is a real surprise of a movie.
Written and directed by Kevin Smith — yes, that Kevin Smith — it begins with three
guys being drugged and kidnapped by a Christian cult.
There's a little torture, a little general unpleasantness, and then federal law enforcement
shows up, kicking everything into top gear.
Smith pulls a fantastic switcheroo, trading out the basic "kidnapped by cult" tropes for
a story that draws clear inspiration from the infamous Waco siege.
Michael Parks' and John Goodman's performances are top-notch, and Smith's direction takes
a giant leap forward from his comedy features.
Quite simply, Red State is terrifying, carefully treading the line between the real and the
supernatural in a way that makes the viewer wonder if the cult is actually onto something.
Given the horror of the real-world situation the film is based on, there was some off-screen
controversy; when the Westboro Baptist Church protested the film, Smith joined them on the
picket line.
Smith also interviewed members of the church after inviting them to attend a screening
of the movie.
Sometimes, life is even weirder than the movies.
Getting kidnapped by a cult is scary enough.
But what if the tables were turned?
Panos Cosmatos' psychedelic horror movie Mandy stars Nicolas Cage as Red, a lumberjack whose
wife Mandy is kidnapped by a cult and burned alive in front of him.
In revenge, Red goes on a rampage, taking out the cultists one by one with righteous
rage.
The movie's heavy metal score and aesthetic combine perfectly with the constant and grotesque
displays of brutal violence.
In Mandy, Cage unleashes his most extreme performance, and the movie is all the better
for it.
The movie doesn't have much of a traditional plot and can feel non-linear at times, but
it's really more of an experience than a story anyway.
This one requires a big screen, a dark room, and some serious speakers to enjoy properly,
but in the right environment, it's truly impressive to behold.
In most cult movies, the main characters are the ones in peril.
Midsommar is a little different.
In this movie, the cult is dangerous to pretty much everyone in the movie except for the
protagonist, Dani.
Dani loses her family in a tragic accident shortly before a trip to Sweden with her boyfriend
Christian and his friends.
However, Christian is not a particularly attentive boyfriend, and Dani's isolation and anxiety
only becomes worse as time goes on.
However, the cultists, called the Hårga, embrace her, and offer her an escape from
her difficult relationship and lonely life.
"Do you feel held by him?
Does he feel like home to you?"
The actions of the Hårga are truly horrific, but the group shows Dani more love than she's
ever seen before, and, for the first time in her life, she feels valued.
Midsommar is not only a fascinating look into the nature of toxic relationships — it also
offers a terrifying glimpse into how tempting cults must look when you're down on your luck.
Society, a 1989 horror-comedy written and directed by Brian Yuzna, posits that maybe
the rich aren't like us at all — because, well, they're monsters.
Billy Warlock stars as Bill, a rich kid in Beverly Hills, California who doesn't trust
his high-society family and their friends.
He has good reason not to, as well: as he discovers, Los Angeles' wealthy are actually
participants in massive, creepy, and disgusting orgies known as "the Shunting."
The Shunting offers the kind of gross-out horror you'd usually expect from someone like
David Cronenberg, but here, it's actually played for laughs.
Indeed, there's no other movie on this planet quite like Society.
This one's worth checking out for that reason alone.
The straight-to-Netflix horror movie The Perfection is a pretty wild ride.
The movie follows elite young cellists Charlotte and Lizzie, who are both competing for the
attention of the head of their music academy, Anton.
The young women are quickly pitted against one another, each doing horrible things to
prevent the other from succeeding as a cellist.
The Perfection is a terrifying downward spiral of a movie that cranks everything up to 11
— until, suddenly, it isn't.
The third act twist and eventual climax are, no pun intended, perfection.
A story that could easily have ended on a sour note instead ends on a feminist, queer-positive
one, and it makes for a refreshing blast in the world of horror.
The cult at the center of The Perfection is loosely based on elite art and music companies,
and while it's hard to believe the lengths this one goes to, abuses of power within the
arts are all too common.
The Perfection is a twisty horror flick with some seriously disturbing undertones, but
it's all worth it for the ending's final moments of total catharsis.
In The Ritual, a group of friends reunite after years apart for a backpacking trip in
the Swedish countryside.
Before long, however, they have become embroiled in an ancient conspiracy that will tie them
together for eternity.
Early on, one of the friends is injured while hiking, forcing the group to cut through the
woods, where they end up in an abandoned cabin.
The cabin formerly housed some cultists who worshiped an ancient forest god, and things
get very spooky very fast.
Director David Bruckner does a brilliant job with the movie's more subtle horrors, slowly
building up to a brilliant reveal with some excellent creature design.
The Ritual is a great look at masculine relationships and how they can be impacted by traumatic
events, but it's also a damn scary monster movie — and more than worth checking out.
Many cult movies are pretty obscure as far as the cinematic canon goes, but you can't
mention the genre without discussing Stanley Kubrick's sexually-charged cult masterpiece,
Eyes Wide Shut.
In Kubrick's final feature, Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman star as William and Alice Hartford,
a seemingly vanilla couple who decide to spice up their sex life.
"A little oversimplified, Alice, but yes, something like that."
Bill sneaks his way into a party at which all of the men wear masks and all of the women
must be beautiful, and their marriage doesn't seem like it can hold up to the strains of
jealousy that follow.
Eyes Wide Shut is notoriously indulgent, but it's doubly fascinating given Cruise's ties
to Scientology, as well as his and Kidman's divorce, which came only two years later.
And, as you'd expect from a master like Kubrick, it also looks absolutely gorgeous.
All in all, Eyes Wide Shut is probably one of the less overtly frightening cult movies
out there, but it's still driven by a lingering sense of horror that will stick with you for
long after the credits roll.
There's a very good reason that it has become one of the most iconic cult tales of all time.
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