One part Lucio Fulci and one part Andrzej Zulawski, the strange and atypical Luz is now out in limited theaters and expanding wider in the following weeks. Written and directed by Tilman Singer, his debut feature tells of taxi driver Luz as she enters a police station one night to report an assault. Meanwhile, a demon is on the loose elsewhere, hopping body to body. It becomes clear that the demon is determined to make its way back to the woman it loves; Luz.

It’s not just the setup the makes Luz feel different from any other possession horror film out there, though the demon’s body-hopping style is reminiscent of The Hidden. It’s the avant-garde way in which Singer relays this story. Through wide-tracking shots, dreamlike and smoky staging, and an electronic score to boot, Luz is firmly planted in the experimental. There’s nothing traditional about this film, from the way it handles the mysteries behind this demon’s desire to find Luz or the way it unravels the narrative. Which means that while it most certainly won’t be for everyone, the way it approaches the possession genre is refreshing.

Possession horror began in earnest with William Friedkin’s seminal classic, The Exorcist. Based on William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist established the rules and tropes of the subgenre, largely in part because of the wave of films that borrowed from it in attempt to capture the same success. Tropes like the demon targeting a young female, who often wears white gowns to her exorcism. Or a priest suffering a crisis of faith. Symptoms of possession taking root almost always include speaking in tongues, levitation, and some form of body mutilation or gruesome physical deformity, too. There’s also a good chance the possession film will come with some warning that it’s based on a true story.

Because these tropes and story beats mirrored from The Exorcist have become so exhaustingly common, it’s become far too easy to just classify exorcism centric films as a separate subgenre. But they all stem from demonic possession, and the ones that attempt to break free from The Exorcist blueprint are worth celebrating.

The first major release to do so, launching a franchise of its own in the process, was Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. A group of friends unwittingly unleash a Kandarian demon via tape recording found in the basement of their weekend getaway cabin. It doesn’t just choose one victim to possess, it wants them all. One by one, the group is possessed and turned into a gnarly deadite until only Ashley J. Williams (Bruce Campbell) is left. And as the franchise lays out, there’s no removal of this demonic infestation; Ash’s battle with demons is lifelong.

In the years that followed, similar demonic possession films appeared. 1985’s Demons turned unlucky theatergoers into demonic monsters, spread by scratches. Night of the Demons bent the rules even further with its fun take on demons that take over a Halloween party by way of possession. John Carpenter gave demonic possession his own spin with the second entry in his Apocalypse Trilogy, Prince of Darkness. Here he took the concept of the ultimate evil, Lucifer, and merged it with physics, namely matter and anti-matter.

Event Horizon plays out like a gory haunted house movie set in space, but that haunted house- the Event Horizon– is sentient, possessed by the hell dimension from which it returned. In turn, that evil finds a human host in Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), who self-mutilates and eschews his former identity to carry out the ship’s desires.

While the found footage craze came and went, and is now often met with derision, we can’t be too upset at a subgenre that gave us the REC franchise. The first film delivered a terrifying outbreak style horror film, an intense sort of zombie movie. Except, the final act revealed the outbreak’s source. A priest kept a possessed girl, Tristana Medeiros, sedated and used her in scientific experiments. Eventually, he isolated the possession to a particular enzyme, a contagion spread by saliva and bodily fluids. This outbreak, and the infected, are all demonic in nature. Something that’s expanded upon in REC 2, pushing even further into the religious.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter may have proven divisive with its slow-burn brand of horror, but it’s an interesting premise that I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of; a horror movie set after the exorcism. At least in part. The plot sees two girls facing an evil, demonic presence when they’re left behind at their boarding school over winter break, and it plays against a parallel story that sees one of the girl’s parents picking up a lonely girl at a bus stop while en route to the school. While the former plays out like an atmospheric tale of demonic possession, the latter takes a meditative examination of the aftermath. What happens to the victim after the demon has been expelled?

The Exorcist was so effective and such a major success that it became the standard. Its recognizable characteristics makes it easy to dominate the conversation about possession horror. But there’s a lot more to the subgenre, including great movies that aren’t afraid to explore different aspects, themes, and mythologies of possession. Luz is just the latest of many demonic possession films that defy convention, and they’re all worth seeking out.