The horror genre is the only one that has a perfect blend of imagination, history, and reality to some extent. Though horror movies are not built well in most cases, those that are made under good direction are marking new parameters of excellence, and movies like Midsommar fall under this category.
The movie, Midsommar has the perfect blend of horror, psychological and historical elements. You know, nowadays, horror movies are not about ghosts. They are now more about rituals, cults, sacrifices, etc. These are something that we find evidence of in our history.
Today’s horror genre is playing with the creepiness of historical events. Midsommar has portrayed the creepy nature of rituals that resides in almost every culture in the best way.
The movie starts with a group of friends who decide to go to a village situated in Sweden to be a part of an interesting ritual that can help them to write their thesis.
There is also a couple in that group named Christian and Dani. Christian is actually emotionally detached from Dani, and the relationship is falling apart.
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The later events show how they go to that village and become a part of a horrible ritual, and some of their friends get sacrificed. In the end, Dani becomes the chosen queen. The decision of choosing the next person to be sacrificed is given to her.
Dani, who is angry with her boyfriend for being sexually involved with another woman, chooses him to be sacrificed. The movie ends here.
There are more significant details about this movie that build the creepy plot. We will discuss them while discussing other movies like Midsommar.
The Ritual (2017)
As it is very evident from the name, the movie The Ritual (Directed by David Bruckner) is also about a group of friends unintentionally being a part of a satanic ritual. Something similar happened in the movie Midsommar.
A group of five friends decides to go on an adventurous trip to the forests of Sweden. But their plan drops when one of their friends dies in the act of robbery. The plot then shifts to 6 months later.
The remaining four friends decide to go on the trip in memory of their dead friend. Everything is going as planned. They set up a bonfire and offer some drinks to the portrait of their dead friend.
On the next morning, they realize that someone has drunk the alcohol they have offered to the portrait.
Later, things take a creepy turn, and one of the friends gets injured. The wound was something symbolic. They decide to return but take the path of the forest to reach early.
This is where things start going worse. A creepy creature drags one of the friends, who, in the later part of the movie, tells them that he is going to be sacrificed and advises them to leave the place as soon as possible.
The creature is actually a god-like figure, and the villagers sacrifice someone to gain immortality.
In the end, only one friend comes back alive.
Hereditary (2018)
The Movie Hereditary is considered one of the best horror movies of all time. It is the debut film of director Ari Aster. He is the one who directed Midsommar.
The story is about a family and how they become a part of a ritual. The secret lies in the death of the most senior member of the family, the grandma.
It already sounds creepy, right? Well, the events are far more creepy and disturbing. The story starts with the death of Ellen, the grandmother.
From the beginning, the movie gives hints about Ellen being involved in a certain kind of cult. We also see that the youngest daughter Charlie is very close to her grandma and is as creepy as her.
We see her doing creepy things like beheading a bird, etc. After Ellen’s death, Charlie gets killed due to an accident. She is beheaded.
Later, her mother, Annie, comes to know that Charlie has been drawing something disturbing and tries to burn the sketchbook, but she can’t.
In the end, we see her being possessed by a spirit and cutting her head. Only Peter, Charlie’s brother, was alive, but eventually, he was also sacrificed.
The Unholy (2021)
This movie does include ghosts and spirits. The Unholy focuses on the Biblical warning of how some evil spirits can claim to be the holy ones and direct the masses to commit a sin.
The movie stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the leading character. He plays the role of a journalist who is investigating some creepy and disturbing events that have happened over the years.
He came to know about a girl who was burnt alive because people thought that she was a witch, and her ashes were kept in a doll.
Morgan accidentally frees the spirit, who gradually possesses a girl who cannot speak, but after being possessed, she starts speaking and announces that she is mother mary. But Morgan and his partners know the truth.
The girl realizes that the force is evil and kills herself to protect the people. Later, she is brought back to life by sacred prayers.
The Silence (2019)
You might find a lot of similarities in this movie with “A Quiet Place.” Both movies are based on some horrible alien attack, and all they need to do to survive is to stay quiet.
The Silence shows a family, where the girl is deaf and is now stuck in a situation where they cannot make a sound because the U.S is under the attack of Vesps.
These creatures kill any living being that makes noise. Eventually, they come to know that these creatures are actually laying eggs on dead bodies and increasing in numbers.
The family then heads north as Vesps cannot survive in the cold. The movie ends with the scene where the girl and her boyfriend are hunting on Vesps.
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
The Cabin in the Woods is a movie that, in the end, puts the viewers in complete shock. As the movie starts, it looks like any other typical horror movie that has monsters, darkness, and intimate scenes in it.
But through the end, it is revealed that all the supernatural things are actually a part of a satanic ritual.
Chris Hemsworth, Richard Jenkins, Fran Kanz, etc., are the actors who played different characters.
A group of friends comes to a cabin situated in the woods and becomes a part of a ritual. Only two friends survive in the end. The cabin symbolizes the earth.
In the end, a big hand crushes the cabin symbolizing the end of the world.
IT (2017)
Who can forget this masterpiece? IT is one of the greatest movies of all time. Everything about this movie is in perfect balance. Starting from the evil character of Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard, who recently finished shooting “The Crow.”) to the innocent children who, in the end, unfold the hidden truths of the underworld.
Though the movie apparently looks like a typical movie of children fighting with monsters, it has some deep meanings and symbols.
A group of friends is discussing the case of Bill’s brother going missing years ago. He is still haunted by the events. The missing guy is the same one who was dragged down the drain by the clown named Pennywise in the beginning.
Eventually, the group starts having nightmares and discovers that it is all happening because of the clown. We slowly realize that Pennywise actually hunts upon the fears of kids.
Each kid in the group has a particular fear, and this is something Pennywise takes advantage of. In the end, they successfully free themselves and promise each other that they will come back as adults if “It” comes back.
Mama (2013)
Director and co-writer Andy Muschietti has done a great job of mixing the past and the present. Moreover, he beautifully portrayed the pain and misery of a soul who has turned evil.
The movie starts with a man who has been going through a tough time and eventually decides to kill his entire family, including two daughters.
Though he successfully kills his wife, he fails to repeat the same with his daughters. A ghostly figure saves them.
Years later, the two girls were found and taken to childcare. Those who were assigned to take care of them start having nightmares and also witness some strange events.
After some research, they find that the spirit who has been protecting the two girls was once a mother and a mental patient. She tried to kill herself and her daughter by jumping off a cliff, but her baby survived.
Since then, she has been looking for her daughter. But she finds the two girls instead. In the end, we see that one of the two girls decides to stay with the ghost that they call “mama,” who has turned into a harmless spirit. The other one returns to normal life, and the movie ends there.
Veronica (2017)
“Based on a True Story.” This sentence always scares us, right? You never know when you will become a part of a satanic ritual and die. Don’t panic. This is something that happened to a Spanish girl.
The movie Veronica is based on that event. The girl died after she played the Ouija board game. The police couldn’t find the reason behind her death.
Directed by Paco Plaza, the movie starts with a 15-year-old named Veronica, who is living with her mother and two younger siblings. One night she and her friends decide to call the spirit with the help of the Ouija board.
Veronica started screaming like a demon and fainted. The plot then shifts to the next morning when the nun of her school tells her that she has been possessed by a demon. She forgot to say goodbye to the spirit, and that’s why all the creepy things are happening.
Veronica tries to fix everything and asks her friends to play with that Ouija board again, but they refuse.
Later, she takes the help of the siblings but fails and eventually dies. The police see her killed by some unseen force. They elaborated on the event in their case file.
The Devil Inside (2012)
Directed by William Brent Bell, who has recently gained popularity for the movie Orphan: First Kill, The Devil Inside is kind of similar to the movie Veronica. But it is not based on a true event.
The story begins with a girl who is trying to find out about her mother. Her father tells her how she was possessed, and the exorcism performed on her eventually got failed. She murdered three people and now spends her days in a mental asylum.
3 days later, the father died mysteriously. The girl then receives the mental asylum to see her mother. She started conveying some details that nobody knew except the girl.
The hospital members and the church decide to help the girl. They take her to see another exorcism, and there, they experience something terrible.
The later events enable us to know that there are 4 different demons who eventually possess one of the partners and kill him. In the end, no one survives.
The movie ends with a website description saying that the case is still open and no more evidence has been found.
It portrays that the girl is also missing, and the police are working on it.
The Vatican Tapes (2015)
Mark Neveldine, the director, beautifully described what exorcism looks like and how it’s not always for the good.
The Vatican Tapes revolves around a girl who accidentally gets cut on her birthday and is rushed to the hospital. There, she met a man.
He injected something in her. Though everything seems to be normal, she starts behaving strangely while returning from the hospital in the car, which causes an accident.
She goes into a coma but right before she is about to be declared as dead, the girl wakes up and seems to be perfectly fine.
Now, she starts showing all the symptoms of being possessed. Later events enfold that her mother was a prostitute, which makes her existence unholy.
Eventually, she kills her father and everybody else in the family. The movie ends with her being a part of a massive cult and greeting her followers.
The ending symbolizes that she has been a part of a nasty ritual to spread evil on this earth, and they have succeeded in doing so. The movie is open-ended.
So, the audience is free to create a conclusion based on their own theories or imagination.
Ouija (2014)
Ouija, the very name suggests that it’s all about summoning spirits and fighting for life. a lot of people claim that it has similarities with the movie The MidnightClub. The story begins with a group of friends who are absolutely shaken by the death of their friend. She hung herself to death after being possessed by a demon in her home.
The Ouija board was the reason behind everything. The friends decide that they will use the board and communicate with the spirit of their friend. But, the spirit they called was actually of someone else.
Now, the spirit begins to haunt them, and some of them get killed. Later, they came to know that the spirit was none but a girl who actually used to live in the house before their friend.
Her mother used to perform planchettes and use her as a medium. She killed her by sewing her mouth. The only way to save themselves was to unsew her mouth.
The mother ghost stops them, but they end up unsewing it. The mother ghost was actually protecting them. Unsewing her mouth will give her more power.
What will they do now? They need to burn her body and the board. They successfully do that. But we see the same board again in the house, indicating the next victim.
The Insidious Series (2010, 2013, 2015, 2018)
The Insidious film series is one of the best horror series. Each sequel is made with great filmography insights. You will never feel disconnected and bored.
The story is pretty long and complex. You need to move back and forth in time again and again to understand the plot.
The story begins with a little boy who somehow opens the door to the dark world. From there, some demonic creatures are coming out and have been haunting the family. The boy is gifted with a power where he can go back in time in his dreams.
This is something that his father also has. Now, as his son is possessed by the demon, the father needs to go to sleep and enter the dreams of his son and fight the demon in his sleep and close the doorway.
They succeed in doing so. The entire series is woven in such a good manner that the viewers don’t feel bored at all and the suspense always stays at the end.
No One Gets Out Alive (2021)
No One Gets Out Alive is a creepy movie. We will be able to see some creepy insects and creatures which are actually a part of a sacrifice.
So the movie begins with a girl named Amber, who is living in the U.S illegally and suffering to create a fake Id. Somehow, she manages to find a pg and starts noticing some paranormal activities there.
Amber also starts having nightmares about her dead mother. Eventually, she realizes that the owner of the pg and his brother are actually involved in some kind of cult, and they sacrifice women for their good health.
She is also about to be sacrificed when her uncle’s ghost saves her, and she kills red and his brother.
In the end, we see her also becoming part of the cult.
Host (2020)
Have you ever thought about what will happen if you see your friends getting killed by demons over a zoom call? Yes, this is something Haley has witnessed in the movie Host, one of the best footage horror movies.
A group of friends decides to conduct a weekly zoom meeting so that they can stay in touch during the time of the pandemic. They decide to perform planchette and call a spirit.
They succeed in doing so. But unfortunately, the spirit they have called is not a friendly one. Instead, it’s a demon determined to kill all of them.
Over the course of the movie, we see some disturbing zoom meeting clips where we see the friends being killed by the demon.
The movie ends with two friends who are still alive and trying to escape the house, but suddenly, the ghost appears in front of them, and the zoom meeting ends.
The movie is shown as a computer screen recording of a zoom meeting, and we, as the viewers, are a part of this meeting which expires, and we don’t know what has happened to the other side.
A Classic Horror Story
Directed by Robert De Feo. A Classic Horror Story will absolutely confuse you. The movie starts with a group of people who are going to a hospital to abort the baby of one of their friends.
But they end up in a forest, and there is a deserted cabin. They see some creepy evidence of satanic rituals and decide to leave. But few of them stay and decide to go inside the cabin.
They find a girl trapped who later discloses that there are three demons, and some people perform the sacrification of humans to gain richness.
They see one of their friends beaten to death. Eventually, the only alive girl realizes that it was all a part of a movie shooting and meets the production team as well.
Everything seems to be like a happy ending, but suddenly, she ends up killing everyone. The movie ends with people talking about the movie ending, recorded by her own camera.
Conclusion
If you love horror movies and take a great interest in finding out the hidden theories, start watching these movies. Moreover, horror and thriller movies are not about ghosts only. It can be about murders as well.
So, if you love exploring the complexity of human psychology and murder thrillers, read this – Top 20 Movies Like American Psycho Based on Murder, Thriller & Human Psychology.
