Most people would like to believe they are immune to the influences of charismatic cult leaders, the allure of odd spiritual practices, and the sense of belonging a cult is all too willing to provide, but in both real life and especially in horror movies, you don’t have to be in a cult to be its victim. Cults are the multi-armed monsters that lurk in broad daylight.
So how do you dodge a cult's clutches? How do you keep yourself from being manipulated right into the bloodthirsty maw of a murderous cult leader? Fortunately, we at FANGORIA have dug through Tubi’s cult horror collection to save your skin and protect you from the sword or sickle of your local cult menace.
For example, if you're driving through rural Nebraska, watch out for children running into the middle of the road! In Children of the Corn, protagonists Vicky (Linda Hamilton) and Burt (Peter Horton) certainly had other things to worry about before they got to Gatlin, Nebraska, but running over a bleeding child certainly exacerbated the situation. From there, the couple becomes even more entangled in the mysteries lurking in this corn-infested ghost town.
Children of the Corn, despite its unnerving performances, is a fun romp through a bad situation. The cult in this film, based on a short story by Stephen King, uses Christian language and imagery to speak for a new, strange god called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Most notably, the cult is made up entirely of, you guessed it, children.
On their nineteenth birthdays, the titular Children are ritually sacrificed to appease the cruel god in the cornfields. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands at 10 and 2, and you might swerve Isaac (John Franklin) and his flock of killer kids.
But they aren’t the only ones who look and sound vaguely familiar and Christian. Stepping into the mech suit that is Christianity to create immediate connections with potential followers is incredibly common, even with new-age cults. Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple looked and felt like tent revivalists, though Jones himself didn’t fully subscribe to Christian belief.
You could make a whole movie out of the final 24 hours of Jones’ commune in Guyana alone, and, as it turns out, someone did. Ti West’s The Sacrament is a found-footage retelling of the Jonestown massacre. Patrick (Kentucker Audley) and Sam (A. J. Bowen) visit a remote commune called Eden Parish at the request of Patrick’s sister, Caroline (Amy Seimetz). Eden Parish’s residents live under the rule of a leader known only as Father (Gene Jones).
Though the film alters names and certain details, anyone familiar with the massacre will recognize how closely it adheres to reality. Tense, cruel, and often difficult to stomach, The Sacrament unflinchingly examines one of modern history's most harrowing tragedies. If The Sacrament has a moral, perhaps it’s to stay home. That remote commune is definitely bad news, but it’ll take more than a camera crew and brotherly protection to save the day.
It’s a common misconception to attribute the tragedy at Jonestown to a mass suicide, perhaps because mass suicide is not unheard of in the world of eclectic cults. Heaven’s Gate ended this way when the new age religious group’s members died by suicide in 1997 in an attempt to transcend to an elevated state of being, signaled by the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet.
In The Lodge, Grace (Riley Keough) has escaped this very fate when her father’s cult engages in mass suicide. As an adult, she begins seeing Richard (Richard Armitage), who has been researching the cult. When his estranged wife finds out, she kills herself. Understandably, their children, Aiden (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh), become inconsolable.
Months later, Grace, Richard, and his kids vacation together for Christmas in a lodge in Massachusetts. When Richard leaves and the rest of the family gets snowed in, Aiden and Mia use Grace’s dark past against her, hoping to scare her away. As it turns out, leaving a cult does not necessarily mean the cult leaves you. Grace is haunted by reminders of her trauma, and she struggles not to revert back to her old ways. Atmospheric and haunting, The Lodge is great for audiences looking for something more mean-spirited and claustrophobic.
Grace’s father being responsible for their cult and their cult’s grisly end is difficult to imagine for the average person, but even cults whose members aren’t related by blood tend to use familial structure as a way to effectively ingratiate new recruits. The most famous example of this by far is the Manson Family. Headed by Charles Manson, this young “family” of hippies lived on a ranch in Los Angeles and would go on to murder several people, including the actress Sharon Tate.
In spite of the blood on the Manson family’s hands, people are often keen to point out that Charles himself didn’t participate directly in the murders. Instead, he simply influenced his “family” and gave them instructions, and they carried out his bidding. This isn't unlike Annie’s family's agenda in Ari Aster’s Hereditary.
As the title suggests, Hereditary presents a literal family affair, spanning generations with sinister undercurrents. When Annie (Toni Collette) faces the very mixed experience of seeing her mother pass away, the dominoes begin to fall, and it becomes evident there is more at work than just the misfortune of random tragedies. Her cruelest dreams bleed into real life, her greatest fears and emotional anxieties suddenly realized at once.
One of Hereditary’s greatest strengths is the titanic force of its performances, so potent and memorable that the audience might forget there is any mention of a demon king of wealth and knowledge lurking in the shadows. But for those who do see the signs, get out of the house the instant you see the naked strangers hiding behind the living room furniture!
British Lion Films)
Speaking of demons of wealth, what about the higher-end cults and secret societies that aim to bestow riches, success, and power on their members, whether through shady backroom deals or more devilish means? Take, for example, the Order of the Solar Temple, whose members claimed their order formed a new generation of the Knights Templar. The Solar Temple drew on a myriad of pages from various occult practices, but it also recruited heavily among affluent individuals. A shinier crowd can make even a doomsday cult seem all the more tantalizing.
But not every cult portrayed in film is anticipating the end times. Some try to prevent the worst from happening in the first place. In The Wicker Man (1973), Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) is sent to the Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate a missing child. Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) leads the islanders in old Pagan beliefs and rituals. While researching these beliefs, Howie is horrified to learn that, because the island’s crops have recently failed, the locals likely plan to engage in human sacrifice to appease the old gods.
The Wicker Man is royalty in both the folk and cult subgenres of horror cinema, and it’s not hard to see why. Some scenes and images feel plucked straight from nightmares, tailoring an environment meant to make religiously conservative characters like Sergeant Howie. Despite all of Howie’s best and most Christian intentions, he still gets the short end of the wicker stick. Lesson learned: when investigating a disappearance on a remote island, at least bring backup.
But The Wicker Man’s cult is pretty atypical by real-life standards. Cults are rarely pagan or advertise themselves as such; it’s easier to recruit followers with a more recognizable brand, like Jesus. Even Love Has Won, a cult of recent infamy that used the Internet to recruit new followers, included Christianity in the ingredients of their strange belief soup. Now deceased leader Amy Carlson claimed she had memories of being crucified from her past life as Jesus Christ, and that she received messages from Robin Williams, whom she claimed was an archangel.
The protagonists of We Summon the Darkness understand how important and powerful belief is, even when it has no basis in reality. It’s 1988, and three friends, Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson), and Beverly (Amy Forsyth), hit the road to see a rock concert. At the show, they meet three die-hard fans, Mark (Keean Johnson), Kovacs (Logan Miller), and Ivan (Austin Swift). The party continues at Alexis’s parents’ house, and takes a hard turn for the worse when the boys wake up in a room decorated with Satanic iconography.
We Summon the Darkness is a smart, funny rug-pull. Both brutal and exciting, it’s a great watch for fans of The House of the Devil and Green Room. It shows you shouldn’t underestimate anyone, especially when you’re a certain amount of Pabst Blue Ribbons deep and hanging out in strange people’s houses.
As this film is eager to point out, the Satanic Panic was just that — an irrational response to cultural change rather than a network of bloodthirsty occult organizations. Even the most violent of cults do not often angle their killings as “sacrifices,” much less ritual sacrifices to demonic entities. In this way, Adolfo Constanzo, known as The Godfather by his followers, is one of cult history's scariest anomalies. Functioning both as a drug dealer and a cult leader, Constanzo is known for committing ritual sacrifice with the belief that these murders would preserve his entire operation.
Most cults would rather not resort to killing, in fact. Not every cult’s endgame is mass suicide or the deaths of their dissenters. Some cults, like the one portrayed in 1BR, just try to build a community by any means necessary. When Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams and leave her father behind, she gets more than she bargained for when she signs the lease for her new place in a friendly apartment complex.
Things are not as they seem, as her neighbors suddenly turn on her and force her through hell and back. 1BR is a hidden-gem horror movie well worth the time of any viewer who appreciates grueling twists and turns and a hostile environment hiding in plain sight. For those young, intrepid spirits trying to make it in Hollywood while dodging Sarah’s fate, always do background research on your landlords and developers.
What’s more, 1BR takes the time to break down all aspects of what can make a cult feel inescapable: members policing each other, confessional practices, group punishment, lack of privacy, and so on and so forth. On a much larger scale, New York-based cult NXIVM kept its own members complacent through physical and psychological punishment, blackmail, and forced labor. Cults are designed to make it as hard to leave as it is easy to fall for their teachings.
And while cult teachings might sound ridiculous from the outside, it's a common misconception to assume anyone who yields to cult rhetoric is unintelligent. Cult rhetoric doesn’t appeal to idiots—it appeals to individuals who are sad, vulnerable, confused, lost, or grieving. And no horror film captures this truth about cults better than The Invitation.
Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), attend a dinner party thrown by Will’s ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new husband, David (Michiel Huisman). Will hasn’t seen Eden since their son died and their marriage fell apart. Now she’s living large with David, plying her dinner guests with expensive wine, slapping and kissing her friends, and claiming that she and David have learned to reject all negative emotions. But Will suspects something more sinister is brewing.
Fans of slow-burn horror movies will appreciate The Invitation’s pacing and unnerving atmosphere. Few other cult films capture the uncanny tension of uncomfortable conversations and broken social taboos as effectively. The Invitation’s cult also borrows some of the world’s best-known cult tactics and beliefs: a self-help component, new ideas about death, loosely-goosey perspectives on love and relationships, and a vague cosmic plan that requires its members' full, unquestioning cooperation. In any case, to slip out of your ex’s bizarre dinner party in the Hollywood Hills more effectively, make sure they have a working phone before you show up!
You can generally dodge cults with stable support systems and healthy coping mechanisms, but while you keep in touch with good friends and learn to knit, you can also guard yourself with knowledge and check out some great cult horror movies for free on Tubi.
