OCCULT

You can’t blame anyone that rocked up to Download 2023 in a huff or in a hurry. British rock’s biggest weekend has grown even bigger on its 20th anniversary, adding a full extra day and boasting a lineup so stacked that the festival is completely sold out for the very first time. However, 100,000 people descending onto rural Leicestershire is a surefire formula for chaos, and horror stories such as six-mile drives taking six hours are frequently spun across the weekend.The good news is that every single road-weary…

Kenneth Anger was the dark and brilliant magus of Hollywood lore; a reclusive figure who had in his own lifetime assumed the status of myth or pop-culture rumour. He was virtually the Aleister Crowley of movie legend. He was the master of underground cinema and creator of avant-gardist short films treasured by connoisseurs as equivalent in importance to those of Maya Deren and Jonas Mekas.But unusually for a film-maker, his masterpiece was in the medium of the written word: his outrageous, scabrous and scurrilous supposed…

This movie from western Ukraine is one of the strangest and fiercest I have seen in a while: dynamic and yet despairing. It does not allude to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but perhaps that conflict is there subtextually, in the sense of tribal loyalty, community tradition and the distinct, almost occult pull towards the west. There is something of Aleksey German or Sergey Loznitsa here, and its lead character is like a more watchful and subdued, though no less violent, version of someone that Emir Kusturica would dream up.The…

via Antenna Entertainment The horror genre has never been a safe haven for pregnant women, with all sorts of demonic entities and crazed killers seeking out unborn children for a multitude of terrifying means over the decades, with last year’s Malaysian chiller Inang (also known as The Womb internationally) making for a startling addition to canon. Leaning into cliches, the story makes it perfectly clear that you should never trust the kindness of strangers, something that anyone who’s seen even a handful of…

Image: DecalExorcisms are a favorite topic in horror movies for obvious reasons; succinctly, demons are scary. But while we’ve seen a lot of films tackle possession and evil spirits through a Catholic lens, it’s rarer to see other religions brought into the story. That’s a big way that The Offering, about a Hasidic family facing a violent intrusion, stands out.Really, only the patriarch, Saul (Allan Corduner), and his business partner/best friend, Heimish (Paul Kaye), are religious, running Saul’s funeral parlor in…

Screenshot: Tangram CineHistory recalls 1980s Argentina as a time of unease and tragedy exacerbated by power-mad leaders. Cristian Ponce’s unsettling indie History of the Occult revisits that tumultuous time and asks: what if the government was doing it all in the name of black magic?Ponce is the co-creator of The Kirlian Frequency, also known as Ghost Radio, an animated web series set in a fictional town where the supernatural feels emboldened to mix with the human world, in a sort of Stephen King-meets-H.P. Lovecraft…

Image: Amazon StudiosHigh school can be hell even without any supernatural interference. But what happens when an actual demon invades and threatens even the most devoted of teenage alliances? My Best Friend’s Exorcism takes us through this unholy scenario, with a charming cast that almost makes up for its overly familiar story.Abby (Elsie Fisher of Eighth Grade, Castle Rock, and Netflix’s grim Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Gretchen (Amiah Miller of The Water Man and War for the Planet of the Apes) are such besties that…

We’re so excited the new Verge is here.Hi, I’m Will, the senior creative director of The Verge. We’re already working on the next set of improvements and new features for the site, and we hear you on legibility. The new site meets the same accessibility standards set by our last web platform, but accessibility work is never done. We will continue to raise the bar, and we value all of your feedback (including the impressive light mode hacks circulating on Twitter!), so keep sharing and stay tuned. We’re so excited the…

A short teaser from Something Wicked Games It wouldn’t be Gamescom Opening Night Live without a handful of vague teasers to set the mood and put out the feelers for newly-established studios looking to staff up. With that in mind, here’s the briefest of looks at Wyrdsong, an open-world preternatural RPG from Something Wicked Games, a team founded by Bethesda’s Jeff Gardiner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5s48vY3Du8 Cool audio design, a sinister historical backdrop, and… not much else. “Wyrdsong is an occult…

Young Evelyne is obsessed with the supernatural. After experiencing a strange event as a child, she has spent her daily life looking for ways to draw out ghosts and anything spooky, but despite her efforts, nothing seems to hit. Now, though, she might be onto something…  In Evelyne and the Occult, the titular character is determined to prove there is something beyond what we know in our world. She isn’t afraid to test the spooky waters and tempt whatever might be lurking in the shadows to come out to play with her.…