Just when we thought we'd seen every possible spin on the police procedural, someone went
and threw the Devil himself into the mix.
Lucifer premiered in 2016, with Tom Ellis playing the charismatic former guardian of
Hell, and Lauren German as LAPD detective Chloe Decker.
If you've developed a taste for well-meaning-ish Satan with a sense of humor, there are plenty
of movies out there to compliment Lucifer.
From teenagers summoning demons, to supernatural beings mingling with humans, and another Neil
Gaiman adaptation, here are the films to watch if you love Lucifer.
"It's like he's not even trying."
The Devil doesn't make an appearance in the horror-comedy The Babysitter, but a group
of his followers are the main villains.
Cole is your typical 12-year-old enamored with his hot babysitter, Bee.
That is, until she invites her friends over to his house and murders one of them so she
can collect his blood for their Devil-worshipping ritual.
Like Lucifer, The Babysitter treats its devilish theme with unyielding dark humor, and it notches
up the gore to 11.
The cast is a Gen Z who's-who: the gang of teens includes former Vine star Andrew Bachelor,
and model and actress Bella Thorne.
And if you're wondering why Bee looks so familiar, you may recognize Samara Weaving from the
hit series Hollywood, her memorable performance in another horror-comedy, Ready or Not, or
her brief role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The Babysitter is fun, it's tongue in cheek, and it ticks all your Devil-worshipping horror
must-haves - all in a satisfying wink-wink way.
"Did you just blow up Sonya?"
"No."
"I mean I'm not even mad; I'm a little surprised."
Part of the fun of Lucifer is watching mortals interact with supernatural beings, especially
when they're initially skeptical about the existence of things like angels and demons.
That dynamic also plays out in the 2018 British horror film Malevolent.
Florence Pugh and Ben Lloyd-Hughes play Angela and Jackson, siblings who scam homeowners
by presenting Angela as a medium and pretending that they can rid haunted houses of their
ghosts.
Strapped for cash, they take a job for a woman who owns a creepy orphanage, doing so despite
their better judgment.
Angela, Jackson, and their two accomplices gradually realize that their little ghost-hunting
charade isn't going to cut it in a place that may in fact be haunted by real, violent spirits.
2018 was a big year for Florence Pugh - in addition to starring in Malevolent, she also
appeared opposite Chris Pine in Outlaw King.
The next year saw her in even more high-profile roles.
She turned one of literature's most despised characters into an unlikely heroine in Little
Women, and gave everyone nightmares about bear skins and Swedish cults in Midsommar.
In the end, the scares in Malevolent, like the movie's ghosts, are very real.
At first glance, 2019's Eli doesn't look like it has much in common with Lucifer.
But wait for the twist and you'll understand the link.
The film first introduces us to Eli, a young boy who has severe allergies that mean he
has to be in a protective environment at all times.
When he joins a medical program run by Dr. Isabella Horn for kids with similar conditions,
it initially seems great.
But soon, Eli starts to experience creepy specters and supernatural events.
He learns that all of Dr. Horn's other patients have died during the treatment, and it starts
to look like his unique condition might have devilish origins.
Directed by Ciaran Foy, Eli shakes up the usual Devil myth.
Unlike Lucifer, it leans into the evil side that comes with being a demon - perfect for
when you want to shake with fear instead of laughter.
Lucifer started as a supporting character in The Sandman, a comic series created by
British author Neil Gaiman.
Lucifer was later granted his own self-titled spinoff series, which ran for 75 issues.
Stardust was also adapted from a work by Gaiman, in this case a novel of the same name, published
in 1997.
And it also depicts humans dealing with magical beings in disguise.
The story follows Tristan, who leaves his small village of Wall for the magical kingdom
of Stormhold.
"I'm charged with guarding the portal to another world, and you're asking me to just let you
through?"
"Yes, because let's be honest - it's just a field."
He's hoping to capture a fallen star.
But out of the sky, the star is not a ball of fusing gas molecules: it's a woman named
Yvaine.
Meanwhile, a witch sets out to find the star, so she and her sister witches can eat its
heart and restore their youth and power.
Plus, the old king has just died, causing a power struggle between his remaining sons.
The victor, Septimus, also wants the star, and he currently has the magical stone he
needs to claim his throne and can grant him immortality.
Stardust brings a quirky humor to the fairytale fantasy genre - just like Lucifer does for
police procedurals.
"And you darling, I have some lovely dresses.
Take your pick."
"Oh no, really, I'm fine."
"Honey, you're wearing a bathrobe."
There's no Devil causing trouble in Bleach - but there are supernatural beings roaming
Earth.
The 2018 movie is a live-action feature adaptation of the manga of the same name, which was a
big hit during its run from 2001 to 2016.
It was also adapted into a popular anime series, which was canceled in 2012 but is scheduled
for a reboot in 2021.
Ichigo appears to be your average 15-year-old, except he can see ghosts.
Then he encounters Rukia.
She's a Soul Reaper, or a spirit guide who brings the souls of the departed to the Soul
Society.
Left among humans for too long, souls turn into monstrous creatures called Hollows, which
feed on other souls and cause general monster-like damage.
Soul Reapers battle Hollows and purify them so they can join the Soul Society.
When Rukia is injured while fighting a Hollow, she transfers her Soul Reaper powers to Ichigo.
Since transferring them back to her would kill him - until he's amassed enough energy
from battling Hollows - he subs in for her.
Unfortunately, the other Soul Reapers have other ideas, leading Ichigo to agree to take
on the most fearsome Hollow of all, the Grand Fisher.
Bleach, like Lucifer, is a slick, modern and fun take on traditional concepts like souls,
demons and spirit guides.
Where Lucifer's version of the Devil is mischievous but charming, May the Devil Take You's portrayal
is closer to the traditional merciless, soul-seizing monster.
The movie starts with a man, Lesmana, making a pact with the Devil in the basement of his
villa.
He receives riches in his lifetime in exchange for his soul after death.
You know, the usual.
Ten years later, Lesmana is gravely ill, and his estranged daughter Alfie grudgingly visits
him in hospital, where she witnesses a spirit waiting to drag him to hell.
She returns to their now-dilapidated villa, alongside her half-siblings and stepmother,
with whom she has a rough relationship.
But when they open the basement door which had been nailed shut and covered in charms,
they unleash the spirit Lesmana conjured years before, which starts possessing and picking
them off one by one.
Cue lots of veiny faces, blood vomiting, head-spinning, and creatively grim deaths.
May the Devil Take You was directed by Timo Tjahjanto, who is best known for his gore-heavy
action movies.
He also directed the widely acclaimed thriller The Night Comes for Us in 2018.
If you miss the old-school style of Devil-centric hauntings, this is a nice, gory complement
to Lucifer.
If Lucifer proved anything, it's that demons cannot resist the human world - and Demonic
reminds us that humans likewise cannot resist poking around with demonic spirits.
Six wannabe ghost hunters plan a seance in an abandoned house, the site of a previous
seance that ended in a massacre.
Despite multiple supernatural red flags, they proceed, gathering around a cryptic seal carved
into the floorboards of one room.
What happens to them next forms the core mystery of the film, as their fateful night is slowly
pieced together by Detective Mark Lewis and Dr. Elizabeth Klein, played by Frank Grillo
and Maria Bello, respectively.
The movie is a whodunit horror played out through partial use of found footage.
Like Lucifer, Demonic combines the demon genre with the police procedural - except in this
case, the demon is on the other side of the law.
If your only complaint about Lucifer is that it's not realistic enough, you'll appreciate
the 2017 exorcism documentary The Devil and Father Amorth.
The movie has an excellent pedigree: it's directed and hosted by William Friedkin, director
of 1973's genre-defining movie The Exorcist.
In the documentary, Friedkin revisits several of The Exorcist's shooting locations, and
includes an interview with William Peter Blatty, who wrote the movie's screenplay based on
his own novel.
But the main purpose of the film is to showcase the supposed God-given talents of Father Amorth,
an Italian Catholic priest who claimed to have exorcised tens of thousands of demons
from their unwilling hosts during his long lifetime.
Since The Exorcist was his favorite movie, he agreed to let Friedkin document one such
exorcism, the 11th for that particular "patient."
Where Lucifer is knowingly funny, The Devil and Father Amorth is unwittingly so.
Unless, of course, you believe that he really is casting out demons, in which case it's
even scarier than the movie that launched it.
In Lucifer, it often takes a display of the supernatural to convince humans that they
are, in fact, talking to the Devil.
But in Bright, beings like orcs, elves, and fairies not only walk among humans, they do
so openly.
Human LAPD officer Daryl Ward is less than pleased to be teamed with the first orc cop
in the U.S., Nick Jakoby.
Not only are orcs looked down on by the other races, but Ward also thinks Jakoby once helped
an orc who was suspected of wounding Ward to escape arrest.
One night, the duo is called to a disturbance which leaves only one survivor: an elf girl
with a magic wand, a rare object which most beings cannot wield without dying.
And the few who can are called Brights.
It turns out she's protecting the wand from a group of bad guys who are trying to resurrect
the defeated Dark Lord, a figure many don't even believe exists.
If you enjoy watching an LAPD officer solving crimes of a supernatural nature alongside
beings that are not entirely of this world, Bright is a fun way to do it.
If you believe TV and movies, humans scare easy, so it's necessary for supernatural folks
to disguise their real, terrifying likenesses in clever disguises.
You know, so the normal people don't get frightened.
"I'm not afraid of you anymore."
"You're not?"
Well, okay, normally that's true for Lucifer, and it's definitely true for the antagonists
in The Witches.
As Luke is told by his grandmother Helga in the opening moments of the film, witches hide
their large claws, toeless feet, oversized nostrils, and bald heads under disguises - and
they hate children.
It's a cute story, until Helga and Luke go on vacation and unknowingly book into the
same hotel as a convention of witches.
There, Luke discovers their plot to turn all the children in the world into mice by spiking
candy with a magic potion.
The Witches is as fun and silly as Lucifer, with a touch of The Goonies thrown in for
good measure.
What's not to love?
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