Best Cult Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of cult cinema — measured across 2,182 indexed frames from 31 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Cult films over-index on blood, skin and blonde hair — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
mother! (2017)
Darren AronofskyDP Matthew LibatiqueIMDb 6.6TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Amidst a wild flat meadow encircled by an Edenic lush forest, a couple have cocooned themselves in a secluded mansion that was not so long ago burned to the ground, devotedly restored by the supportive wife. Within this safe environment, the once famous middle-aged poet husband is desirous of creating his magnum opus; however, he seems unable to break out of the persistent creative rut that haunts him. Then, unexpectedly, a knock at the door, the sudden arrival of a cryptic late-night visitor and his intrusive wife will stimulate the writer's stagnant imagination. Little by little, much to the perplexed wife's surprise, the more chaos he lets in their haven, the better for his punctured male ego. In the end, will this incremental mess blemish, irreparably, the couple's inviolable sanctuary?
- 2
Apostle (2018)
Gareth EvansDP Matt FlanneryIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →
The year is 1905. Thomas Richardson travels to a remote island to rescue his sister after she's kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult demanding a ransom for her safe return. It soon becomes clear that the cult will regret the day it baited this man, as he digs deeper and deeper into the secrets and lies upon which the commune is built.
- 3
Martyrs (2008)
Pascal LaugierDP Nathalie Moliavko-VisotzkyIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Fifteen years after a horrifying experience of abduction and prolonged torture, Lucie embarks on a bloody quest for revenge against her oppressors. Along with her childhood friend, Anna, who also suffered abuse, she quickly descends, without hope, into madness and her own delusions. Anna, left on her own begins to re-experience what Lucie did when she was only twelve years old.
- 4
The House Of The Devil (2009)
Ti WestDP Eliot RockettIMDb 6.3TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1983, financially struggling college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret, putting her life in mortal danger.
- 5
Midsommar (2019)
Ari AsterDP Pawel PogorzelskiIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor) are a young American couple with a relationship on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, Christian invites a grieving Dani to join him and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. What begins as a carefree summer holiday in the North European land of eternal sunlight takes a sinister turn when the insular villagers invite their guests to partake in festivities that render the pastoral paradise increasingly unnerving and viscerally disturbing.
- 6
Ben WheatleyDP Laurie RoseIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.
- 7
Tommy Lee WallaceDP Dean CundeyIMDb 5.2TMDB 5.2See in full on FrameThrower →
After the death of her father under very suspicious circumstances, Ellie Grimbridge and Dr Daniel Challis decide to investigate the shady activities of Conal Cochran, the owner of the Silver Shamrock Novelties company. Before long, they discover Cochran's diabolical plot to brainwash the children of America into doing his bidding through a mixture of ancient rituals, technology, and witchcraft. This Halloween, wearing the mask of a skeleton, a witch, or a pumpkin can be deadly. Can Ellie and Daniel thwart the plans of the evil toy-maker?
- 8
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Sean DurkinDP Jody Lee LipesIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
After several years of living with a cult, Martha finally escapes and calls her estranged sister, Lucy, for help. Martha finds herself at the quiet Connecticut home Lucy shares with her new husband, Ted, but the memories of what she experienced in the cult make peace hard to find. As flashbacks continue to torment her, Martha fails to shake a terrible sense of dread, especially in regard to the cult's manipulative leader.
- 9
Society (1989)
Brian YuznaDP Rick FichterIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Bill is worried that he is 'different' to his sister and parents. They mix with other 'upper class' people while Bill is more down to earth. Even his girlfriend seems a bit odd. All is revealed when Bill returns home to find a party in full swing. Not for the weak of stomach.
- 10
Crash (1996)
David CronenbergDP Peter SuschitzkyIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former TV scientist has become obsessed by the marriage of motor-car technology with what he sees as the raw sexuality of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes whom they contort into the shape of trapped corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen, and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.
What cult films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a cult frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — blood is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- blood3.0×
- skin2.6×
- blonde hair2.3×
- stubble2.0×
- plaid shirt2.0×
- eyes2.0×
- doorway2.0×
- wooden chair1.9×
How cult films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate cult from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 55%low keyvs 40% baseline
- 28%closeupvs 21% baseline
- 33%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 55%nightvs 43% baseline
- 33%dayvs 42% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 2,182 frames from 31 films carrying the cult label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/cult
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