Editorials
10 Religious Horror Movies to Watch After ‘The Carpenter’s Son’
Lotfy Nathan’s The Carpenter’s Son has been marred in controversy for its depiction of a flawed Jesus. Starring Nicolas Cage as The Carpenter, the biblical horror film brings up questions about faith, truth, and humanity’s deeply weak state. The cast, which includes FKA twigs (as The Mother) and Noah Jupe (as The Boy), brings the period piece to life with the understanding that it’ll confront the Christian establishment in shocking ways.
This is far from the first time horror has excavated themes of faith and religion. Throughout history, the genre has played with the torment, torture, and trickery that established institutions have delighted in. From The Omen and Carrie to The Conjuring, there’s no shortage of religious-tinged stories that confront believers and non-believers alike with horrifying imagery and, perhaps, sacrilegious storytelling.
Here are 10 religious horror movies to watch next!
Stigmata
Patricia Arquette stars in his late ’90s supernatural horror film that brings into question atheism and the role of institutionalised religion in society. Director Rupert Wainwright sheds light on the real-life phenomenon of stigmata – the appearance of wounds that mimic those of Jesus when he was crucified. Arquette plays Frankie Paige, a young woman with no religious beliefs. She begins experiencing stigmata, and Rev. Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) is beckoned by a high-ranking official to investigate. Stigmata has aged better than it probably should have and is due for a proper reassessment.
Saint Maud
In her feature directorial debut, Rose Glass goes for the jugular with Saint Maud. Following a devout young caregiver, the film explores her psychological break, strict religious beliefs, and how fanaticism can lead to delusion. A tragic past event leads Maud (Morfydd Clark) to misinterpret reality and succumb to her own distorted devices. It’s an impressive film, not only for being a filmmaker’s debut, but also for its approach to religion and faith.
The Devil’s Doorway
Found footage is too often discredited without being given a chance. But filmmakers frequently experiment with style, tone, and approach that other subgenres don’t allow. With The Devil’s Doorway, director Aislinn Clarke tinkers with subtle scares and jump scares in intensely effective ways. When a Virgin Mary statue weeps blood, a priest and a film crew are tasked with documenting the so-called “miracle.“ What transpires over 90 minutes is horrifying and the perfect example of how found footage should be done.
The Sacrament
Ti West’s The Sacrament loosely bases its story on cult leader Jim Jones and the mass Jonestown murder-suicide he orchestrated in 1978. Shot in found footage style, the 2013 film peels back the curtain on social brainwashing and how it impacts particularly vulnerable people desperate for family. With A.J. Bowen and Joe Swanberg among the cast, essential figures in the mumblecore wave of the late 2000s and early ’10s, the film offers an insider look into how cults operate and function.
The Vigil
Keith Thomas’s The Vigil is a real mind melter. When a young man agrees to be a shomer over a dead body, he arrives at a dilapidated home already on edge. There’s something buried behind the walls and in the house’s darkest crevices. As the night wears on, that something crawls from the blackness and savagely attacks his mind. The Vigil is one of the biggest surprises of the last few years, deserving of another look.
Candy Land
While tackling a hot-button topic as sex work, director John Swab also explores how extreme fanaticism and the impact of strict religious beliefs can break a person. Candy Land busts down every expectation, offering up a sympathetic look at sex workers and their livelihoods. When the film takes a hard left turn in the middle, it earns its place as one of the best religion-focused horror films of recent years.
The Devils
Ken Russell’s The Devils came back into popularity recently with streaming additions to Shudder and later Criterion Collection. There’s a reason why it has been marred in controversy and censorship over the years. It’s a provocative viewpoint of religion, sex, and control – all wrapped in some of the most unhinged imagery you’ll ever see. The Church would likely call it “blasphemous,“ but it’s a refreshing and tantalising story around the slimy underbelly of religion that so often has been ignored over the years.
Agnes
Mickey Reece’s Agnes is perhaps the most deceiving film on this list. What begins as your typical nunspoiltation flick quickly evolves into something else entirely. The film stars Hayley McFarland as the titular character, and the audience follows her journey through questioning her faith, reconciling what she’s been taught and what is real, and finding her way out of it all. Adjust your expectations going in, and you just might have a good time.
Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism
Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism, directed by Nick Kozakis and loosely based on real events, is the most authentic on this list that honestly feels like it’s ripped from real life. When a young woman exhibits odd behaviour (the film posits it could be attributed to an undiagnosed mental health condition), her husband believes she’s actually possessed by a demon and enlists the help of his church. An egomaniac and extreme preacher agrees to handle the case, and he’s brought in to “heal“ her. Godless unravels with a brutality that’ll make your skin crawl and your blood boil. It remains one of the most infuriating horror films ever made; it just feels too real.
Leave
Leave rarely gets talked about. Alex Herron’s 2022 feature dissects a young woman’s mysterious past (she was left as an infant in a cemetery wrapped in cloth branded with satanic symbols) and her reckoning with what she doesn’t know. When she travels back to a town in Norway, she follows a series of clues and coincidences to uncover the truth about her mother. In his first, non-TV movie, Herron properly excavates issues of upbringing, inherited beliefs, and the often tragic ending of religious fanaticism.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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