Welcome to part three of Cult Classics!
It seems like cults are everywhere right now; in the independent news, in conspiracy theories, in media we consume, in movies we watch... Whether an organized group of powerful extremists controlling our lives really exists, or it is the mere paranoid fear thereof mirroring into horror fiction, it is worth to take a look at this phenomenon and the way it is represented in recent horror movies. In this installment we'll study the cults in The Void (2016), Last Shift (2014), Kill List (2011), The House of the Devil (2009) and Martyrs (2008). The titles are linked to their respective imdb pages for full film information and stills.
I do presuppose that you watched the movies discussed here, so I will only give the shortest plot summary. It would make sense to watch the movies before reading my cult descriptions, as I SPOILER EVERYTHING.
I also decided to add an additional part 4 to this series as I ended up finding more cults that I'd like to talk about than I initially thought.
A cosmic horror locked room mystery and at the same time one of my favorite films of all time...
A small group of people find themselves stuck in an understaffed hospital at night, with a seemingly growing number of hooded cultists armed with curved knives waiting outside, preventing them from going away. The people caught in the hospital are: James, who was fleeing from a farmhouse and is pursued by Vincent and Simon, who want to kill him. He is brought to the hospital by the Sheriff, Daniel, also husband to a member of the medical staff, nurse Allison, who works there alongside Senior Doctor Richard Powell, nurse Beverly and intern Kim. In the waiting room are pregnant teenager Maggie and her grandfather Ben. Plus, there's an additional in-bed patient, Cliff, and a state trooper who arrives late and is one of the first people to die.
And dying is what they do.
As soon as James and Daniel arrive at the hospital, strange and violent occurrences start happening, like Beverly cutting off her own face, stabbing Cliff in the eye with scissors, and Beverly's corpse transforming into a tentacled creature. There's lots of human-made commotions too, like James, in order to escape Simon and Vincent, taking Maggie hostage and stabbing Dr. Powell, who then dies. The excitement is a lot for pregnant Maggie who goes into labor, and while Allison goes to get medicine, a resurrected Dr. Powell kidnapping her. So, yes, there's a lot going on, and I haven't even told you about the in-house morgue and the sub-basement which switches between our dimension and an eldritch hellfest wonderland for deformed, bloodthirsty corpses, gross-looking homunculi, possibly demons and intergalactic entities as well as doctors with "altruistic intentions". It's terrifying down there.
So ultimately, by and large, a lot of people die, some of them switch dimensions by going through a portal, some of them stay stuck in the sub-basement, and exactly two of them survive. Oh, and there's lots of tentacles, the special effects are excellent and the score, oscillating between 80s synth music and cultish chants, is chef's kiss too.
The cult: So what we know, and it's not a lot, is that Dr. Richard Powell, propelled by the pain of losing his daughter and after many a trial and error, found a way to defy death. In order to do so he found "a rite that enabled him to contact entities older than time itself", which would place this cult into the Lovecraftian category.
We don't really know much about the hooded people per se, but that there have been drugs, sex and murder parties at the farmhouse James escaped from. The triangle shape is their symbol and marks important places for them, such as the farmhouse or the door to the sub-basement, and it is also the shape of the portal leading to other worlds as well as the pyramid shape on another world shown in the final scene of the movie. We don't get a ton more of information, but it's enough to place the triangle cult among the cults that hold knowledge over immortality and contact to the Elder Things, possibly. Not bad for a physician to be able to do that.
New cop Jessica's first ever task is to take the last shift at a police station before it is permanently closed, for whatever reason. Her father, who had a good reputation among police officers, was killed on duty several years ago. When she starts the shift she is being told by her commanding officer that a hazmat team will be there for evidence difficult to dispose of and waiting for them, she cannot under any circumstances leave her post.
Well, really scary things happen during this night, and I'm telling you, it spooked out even me - starting with a homeless man urinating on the floor and refusing to leave only to be then found hanged, Jessica hears strange sounds, there are phone calls from dead phone lines, the lights go out and come back, chairs and doors move, ghosts roam around and the whole nine yards.
A sex worker waiting in front of the building tells her that back in the day she was in a cell in this very police station on the day an infamous cult was brought in, and lead by the charismatic John Michael Paymon, they all committed suicide right here on the spot. After many a hazy and frenzied occurrences, including writings of the word "SOW", Jessica shoots the whole hazmat team, mistaking them for the said cult.
The cult: There are two elements here to be remarked about this cult: the Paymon Cult worships the king of Hell, also named Paimon - you may also remember him as the Cluck-Monster from Hereditary, obviously he has set up cult franchises everywhere- also unmistakably deductible from their leader's last name.
The second remarkable thing about the Paymon Cult is that they are heavily inspired by Charles Manson and his "Family". Setting aside the visual similarities that they all look like hippie girls surrounding one crazy but apparently charismatic man (I personally can't see the charm); Manson was obsessed with pigs and in his imagined world order piggies (police, politicians, powerful people he wanted to kill) would be killed, and the word "Pig" would be written on the wall of many Manson's victims. The cult in Last Shift tries to find a vessel for Paimon (he never seems to get enough vessels), and succeeds in turning Jessica into the demon, not the least due to her father's role in capturing the original cult members. But we do know (from a certain other horror movie) that Paimon doesn't want a girl, he wants to be a boy, remember?
Former British soldier turned hitman Jay is struggling in life after a failed mission in Ukraine, plus he's broke. During a dinner party at Jay's house his best friend Gal reveals he has a new job for them, and his girlfriend he brought to the party secretly does some weird witchy Voodoo things in the bathroom.
The new client wants three people killed, and when it's time to shake hands, he cuts Jay's hand without notice and his own, thus making him sign the contract with his blood.
"The Priest", their first target, thanks Jay before being killed. Then comes the "The Librarian" who has a collection of pervert videos, at the sight of which Jay gets distressed and cries. Killing him feels not enough (and yes, he too says thank you), so the two of them kill the Librarian's associates too. They also find a file about themselves and their Kyiv mission.
Jay's hand becomes infected and he goes to his doctor to find that he has been replaced by a different person who is not very helpful and says cryptic things. A try to abort their mission fails as they are informed that stopping now will only lead to the two hitmen and their families being killed - after which Jay hides his wife and son in a cottage far away.
The final name on the list is "The MP", a member of parliament who lives in a mansion, where they witness a human sacrifice by a cult. Nevertheless they can kill their target, but Gal dies too, and so do numerous cultists. Jay flees to save his family but is knocked unconscious during his flight. He wakes up in a field surrounded by the cultists who strip him and place a mask over his face. He is attacked by a person with a hunchback, defends himself with a knife, only to find out that he killed both his wife and son (who was the hunchback). He is then crowned by these folk-horror cultists as their king.
The cult: I swear, this must be the weirdest cult movie and it takes you to unexpected places. The thanking when dying hints that this is a sacrificial cult, the dying being salvaged in some form by being killed by Jay, who must be some sort of "chosen one".
Everything that happens leading to Jay's crowning looks like a sort of recruitment. Jay obviously has a temper, he really gets going when killing people and has the potential to escalate into a rage that will make him kill all and everything - even the most dear to him, his family, his own blood, his friend - he is capable of giving the biggest sacrifice. And he is being awarded for that in the end. The riches that await him are unknown to us, as the movie has an open ending and leaves you in an intense wtf moment. All said above is my interpretation and it all might be wrong, so feel free to let me know if you watched this movie differently!
We didn't have a Satanist cult in today's episode yet, and it was about time to include one. So, allow me to introduce you to yet another Satanist cult from Ti West's 2009 movie The House of the Devil.
There were a lot of rich and powerful people and the metaphors thereof preying on financially poor young people in the 80s - some of them were vampires lusting after their blood, some of them organized in cults. And if there is anything we learned about cults so far, it is that they either want to crown you, use you as a vessel, kill you as a sacrifice, or... to subject you to the much popular cultish hobby of Rosemary-Babying you, of course. And that's exactly what happens to college student Samantha Hughes who is offered a strange babysitting job (that coincides with a full lunar eclipse).
The cult: West may have got some game in terms of a unique filmmaking style/visuals, nevertheless I remain largely unimpressed by his movies as he does not bring anything substantially new to the table. The House of the Devil was kind of fresh for its time as it picked up that 80s atmosphere that was very typical for horror cinema historically, but it never amounts to more than a standardly good horror flick. And accordingly the Satanist Cult in this movie is your everyday standard Satanist Cult we all know about, surrounded by the same old components: lunar eclipses, pentagrams drawn on the floor, rituals, grotesque witches, goat skulls, occult symbols, blood... With the ultimate unoriginal goal being to impregnate Samantha to possibly give birth to Satan's own child. Her one act to take back control of her own life, her suicide attempt, fails, and she is doomed to enter the vicious cycle of motherhood to the antichrist we all know from other movies like Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Last Omen, Immaculate etc. etc.
Speaking about rich and powerful cult members cruelly exploiting and abusing the poor and the innocent, it would be a crime to leave out Martyrs, one of the most difficult to watch movies of all time.
We follow two young women invading the house of a seemingly normal family and killing them because they have a bone to pick, as they were kidnapped, tortured and abused as children by some people connected to this family. The girls are then repeatedly attacked by a disfigured woman and flee inside various places in the house in a gradually increasingly suspenseful atmosphere. As her past catches up with her, one of the girls, Lucie, kills herself. The other girl Anna discovers a secret passageway leading to a subterranean chamber containing snuff photography and other horrible things. She is captured by the cult members who not only tell her their terrible intentions, but also let her experience them firsthand.
The cult: Finally a woman as a cult leader and then it has to be something perverted like this... "Mademoiselle" explains to Anna that their secret society wants to discover the secrets of the afterlife and to that end they create "martyrs" who, through extended torture and brutalizing, will reach the borders between life and death and have a transcendental insight into the great beyond. Until now, nobody has made it up until that point. They try again with Anna as a subject, and she proves very resilient, even reaching the final stage in which she is flayed (removal of the skin) alive and enters a euphoric state. She whispers into Mademoiselle's ear what she saw, upon which the latter shoots herself in the face and dies, and we neither know what it was that Anna saw, nor why Mademoiselle killed herself.
There are a couple of options before us; either what Anna saw is so formidable that Mademoiselle quickly wanted to see it herself by dying. Or Anna saw nothing, making all the disgusting things Mademoiselle did throughout her life to orphaned children turn out in vain and futile. For this, Mademoiselle needs to have something like a conscience, which, in the light of her deeds, I doubt she has. Or, there is a hell and she was eager to go there, I don't know.
I find the cult of Martyrs the most frightening one yet, to be honest, as today, with the coming forward of the victims of the Epstein case, the reality hits that there actually are people in real life preying on missing children who run away from home, powerful and rich people who can afford to kill, torture, rape, beat, assault, film it, all for their enjoyment, and get away with it. It's horrible...
So, this abominable cult was going to be the end of the cult series, but I realized that there are a couple of movies that I forgot to include, notably, the abandoned house cult in Baskın (2015), Camp Arcadia from The Endless (2017), and finally the Jimmy Cult from 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026). I can't rule out that I'd find more, or even continue the series but for now, I have one more episode planned, so stay tuned for that, and stay safe!
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