Faith corrupted, divine wrath, spiritual possession. These films find terror in the places people go to feel safe — churches, prayers, the promise of salvation — and reveal something unspeakable waiting on the other side of devotion.
The film that made religious horror a permanent fixture of cinema. Friedkin shot Regan's possession like a documentary, stripping away every cinematic safety net until the audience has nowhere to hide. Over fifty years later, nothing has surpassed the cold, clinical dread of watching a twelve-year-old girl become something that shouldn't exist.
A devout Christian policeman investigates a missing girl on a remote Scottish island where the locals worship older gods. Hardy's folk horror masterpiece builds to one of cinema's most iconic and devastating endings.
A Puritan family exiled to the wilderness unravels under religious paranoia and something ancient lurking in the woods. Eggers' debut turns Calvinist theology itself into a source of horror — the family's faith dooms them as surely as the evil outside.
A palliative-care nurse's fervent devotion to God tips into obsession and delusion. Rose Glass makes you feel Maud's ecstasy and terror as one indistinguishable experience, building to a final image that burns.
Sandberg elevates Conjuring-universe material with genuine craftsmanship. A dollmaker's grief opens a door to something that wears the shape of his dead daughter, and the orphan girls who move in pay the price.
Gareth Evans trades martial arts for folk horror as a man infiltrates a remote island cult to rescue his sister. What starts as a period thriller escalates into something far stranger and more brutal — a fever dream of sacrifice and false gods.