Best Occult Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of occult cinema — measured across 2,567 indexed frames from 35 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Occult films over-index on candle, teeth and eyes — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
The Wailing (2016)
Na Hong-jinDP Hong Kyung-pyoIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
In the small village Goksung in South Korea, police officer Jong-Goo investigates bizarre murders caused by a mysterious disease. His partner relays gossip that a Japanese stranger, who lives in a secluded house in the mountains, would be an evil spirit responsible for the illness. Jong-Goo decides to visit the stranger along with his partner and a young priest who speaks Japanese. They find an altar with a goat head, pictures on the walls of the infected people that died, and an attacking guard dog that prevents their departure until the stranger arrives. Jong-Goo finds one shoe of his beloved daughter, Hyo-jin, in the house of the stranger, and soon she becomes sick. His mother-in-law summons the shaman Il-gwang to save her granddaughter while a mysterious woman tells Jong-Goo that the stranger is responsible. Who might be the demon that is bringing sickness to Goksung?
- 2
A Dark Song (2016)
Liam GavinIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Sophia Howard rents a house in the countryside of Wales and hires the occultist Joseph Solomon to contact her son that was kidnapped and murdered by teenagers practicing black magic. Along the days, Sophia follows the guidance of Solomon in rituals to purify her soul. However Sophia has a hidden agenda that jeopardizes their lives.
- 3
Hellraiser (1987)
Clive BarkerDP Robin VidgeonIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
When Kirsty's father, Larry, and stepmother, Julia, move into Larry's childhood home, Kirsty and her boyfriend take a room nearby. Unfortunately for all involved, Larry's house is already occupied: before the family's arrival, Larry's disreputable brother, Frank, used a supernatural puzzle box to summon a gang of other-dimensional demon sadists. Now, Frank requires a series of blood sacrifices to escape the clutches of Pinhead and the cenobites.
- 4
Ringu (1998)
Hideo NakataDP Junichiro HayashiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Reiko Asakawa is researching into a 'Cursed Video' interviewing teenagers about it. When her niece Tomoko dies of 'sudden heart failure' with an unnaturally horrified expression on her face, Reiko investigates. She finds out that some of Tomoko's friends, who had been on a holiday with Tomoko the week before, had died on exactly the same night at the exact same time in the exact same way. Reiko goes to the cabin where the teens had stayed and finds an 'unlabeled' video tape. Reiko watched the tape to discover to her horror it is in fact the 'cursed videotape'. Ex-Husband Ryuji helps Reiko solve the mystery, Reiko makes him a copy for further investigation. Things become more tense when their son Yoichi watches the tape saying Tomoko had told him to. Their discovery takes them to a volcanic island where they discover that the video has a connection to a psychic who died 30 years ago, and her child Sadako...
- 5
The Craft (1996)
Andrew FlemingDP Alexander GruszynskiIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
In Los Angeles, the teenager Sarah Bailey has just arrived from San Francisco with her father Mr. Bailey and her stepmother to live in an old house. When she goes to the Catholic high school, she is not well received by her schoolmates and has a crush on the football player Chris Hooker. He lures her and tells lies and gossips about their relationship. Soon the outcast Nancy Downs, Bonnie Rachel and Rochelle, who are known as witches, invite Sarah to join them. Nancy lives with her drunken mother and her boyfriend and hates him. Bonnie has awful burning scars on her back and has complex. Rochelle hates the racist Laura Lizzie, who despises her color and her hair. Sarah does not know that she is a powerful witch and when they form their coven, they become powerful and cast spells on their enemies. When Sarah feels that something is wrong with her friends, she meets the clairvoyant Lirio that tells that the spells may return three times stronger.
- 6
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.
- 7
Longlegs (2024)
Osgood PerkinsDP Andres ArochiIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
FBI Agent Lee Harker is a gifted new recruit assigned to the unsolved case of an elusive serial killer. As the case takes complex turns, unearthing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the merciless killer and must race against time to stop him before he claims the lives of another innocent family.
- 8
Sinister (2012)
Scott DerricksonDP Christopher NorrIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
True-crime writer Ellison Oswalt is in a slump; he hasn't had a best seller in more than 10 years and is becoming increasingly desperate for a hit. So, when he discovers the existence of a snuff film showing the deaths of a family, he vows to solve the mystery. He moves his own family into the victims' home and gets to work. However, when old film footage and other clues hint at the presence of a supernatural force, Ellison learns that living in the house may be fatal.
- 9
Antichrist (2009)
Lars von TrierDP Anthony Dod MantleIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
A couple lose their young son when he falls out of a window while they are having sex in another room. The mother's grief consigns her to hospital, but her therapist husband brings her home intent on treating her depression himself. To confront her fears they go to stay at their remote cabin in the woods, "Eden", where something untold happened the previous summer. Told in four chapters with a prologue and epilogue, the film details acts of lustful cruelty as the man and woman unfold the darker side of nature outside and within.
- 10
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Roman PolanskiDP William A. FrakerIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
Desiring to start their family, young Catholic homemaker Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling-actor husband Guy move into The Bramford: New York City's iconic building that brims with unpleasant stories of obscure dwellers and ghastly occurrences. The young couple is soon befriended by their eccentric next-door neighbors, Roman and Minnie and Castevet; shortly afterward, Rosemary gets pregnant. However, little by little--as the inexperienced mother becomes systematically cut off from her circle of friends--alarming hints of a sinister, well-planned conspiracy start to emerge, enfolding timid Rosemary in a shroud of suspicion and mental agony. Why is everyone so conveniently eager to help? And why is Guy allowing it?
What occult films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a occult frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — candle is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- candle4.2×
- teeth2.8×
- eyes2.2×
- shadow1.8×
- blood1.7×
- necktie1.7×
- door1.7×
- child1.6×
How occult 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 occult from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 10%low anglevs 5% baseline
- 55%low keyvs 40% baseline
- 31%dayvs 42% baseline
- 32%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 28%closeupvs 21% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012) 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 2,567 frames from 35 films carrying the occult 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/occult
What is FrameThrower?
Great films start with great references.
The numbers on this page come from the same index you can search directly. Every frame is tagged for lighting, lens, shot size, colour and mood — so you can find the reference you already have in your head, by describing it, by dropping in an image, or by picking a colour.
- The largest film library in the world — searchable frame by frame
- Search by light, colour, lens or mood — or by dropping in an image
- Script to lookbook in an afternoon — a board for every scene, from real frames
- Moodboards you can share on one link — your DP, designer and client see the same film
- API and MCP access — for agentic and developer workflows
- Free to start — no card required
A pitch trailer takes weeks of work and a budget most projects never get. The lookbook gets you there in an afternoon.
DiscoveryResearchReferencesEducation
These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used