When it comes to films creepy enough to send shivers down your spine, the occult has long served as a tantalizing muse for cinema. From shadow‑laden silent classics to mind‑bending modern visions, these ten movies each hide a spooky connection to hidden rites, mystic symbols, or real‑world practitioners of the arcane.
10 Nosferatu
Why These Films Creepy Reveal Occult Secrets
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu is the quintessential Expressionist vampire tale, shot in stark chiaroscuro to make every shadow feel like a living thing. Though it retells Bram Stoker’s Dracula without permission—switching London for the fictional German city of Wisborg and moving the story back to the 1830s—it adds a literal plague that ravages the town, turning the blood‑sucking Count into a literal disease. Count Orlok, with his rat‑like visage, harks back to older folklore rather than the suave aristocrat of the novel.
Because the film was produced without the consent of Bram Stoker’s widow, Florence Stoker, it was shelved until it finally fell into the public domain. That very loophole allowed producer Albin Grau, a self‑described lifelong occultist, to sprinkle the picture with theosophic symbols. Grau’s wartime exposure to Serbian vampire legends inspired the project, and he even inserted occult‑styled hieroglyphics into the letters exchanged between Orlok and the Renfield‑like Knock. The result is a theosophic horror that quietly weaves Eastern mysticism into a classic vampire narrative.
9 The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene’s 1920 expressionist horror The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari pioneered twisted set design to mirror a fractured psyche. The story follows Francis, a naïve student who becomes the victim of the hypnotic circus doctor Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist assistant Cesare. When Francis is driven mad, the audience discovers that the whole tale is an elaborate excuse for his hatred of the sanitarium director—who looks uncannily like Caligari.
Screenwriters Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, both scarred by World War I, infused the film with a political allegory about Weimar Germany’s craving for a strongman. Mayer’s own encounter with a brutal army psychologist and Janowitz’s eyewitness account of a Hamburg sex murder fed the narrative’s darkness. Beyond its visual madness, the film explores cerebral suggestion—what we now call mind control—making it a perfect bridge between expressionist art and occult intrigue.
8 Genuine
Robert Wiene returns in 1920’s Genuine, billed as a “Tale of a Vampire.” The film is essentially one long, surreal dream about an artist’s obsessive fixation on a painted goddess named Genuine. Its sets, rendered by Expressionist painter Cesar Klein, swirl with warped, painted backdrops that amplify the otherworldly atmosphere.
Within the narrative, the priestess Genuine is portrayed as fluent in Eastern magic and occult practices. Though the picture flopped and never enjoyed a critical renaissance, it offers a vivid snapshot of early‑1920s German cinema’s fascination with Freudian psychoanalysis and theosophic mysticism. Directors like Wiene, Murnau, and Paul Wegener routinely slipped Kabbalah, theosophy, and avant‑garde occult aesthetics into their horror spectacles.
7 Haxan
Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 film Haxan masquerades as a documentary while delivering some of the most unsettling witch‑craft imagery ever captured on celluloid. Inspired by the infamous 15th‑century witch‑hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum, Christensen staged vivid recreations of Walpurgis Night rites, medieval black magic ceremonies, and other diabolical spectacles.
Beyond its shocking visuals, Haxan argues that the medieval witch hunts were misinterpretations of mental illness and mass hysteria. The film’s rational conclusions were ignored; in Paris, roughly 8,000 Catholic women protested its premiere, and in the United States the movie was outright banned. Its bold critique of religious persecution cemented its place as a disturbing yet academically significant occult work.
6 The Magician
Rex Ingram’s 1926 silent feature The Magician stars Paul Wegener as the nefarious wizard Oliver Haddo. The screenplay, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel, follows Haddo’s sinister plot to sacrifice the beautiful Margaret in order to forge grotesque homunculi. The novel—and consequently the film—was loosely based on the infamous English occultist Aleister Crowley, who even accused Maugham of plagiarism.
In Ingram’s version, Wegener delivers a chilling performance, while the director experiments with avant‑garde camera work. A standout dream sequence depicts Haddo invoking black magic to summon the Greek god Pan, echoing a widely reported anecdote that Crowley once attempted a Pan ritual in Paris during the early 20th century.
5 Vampyr
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 almost‑silent horror Vampyr adapts J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla rather than the more famous Dracula. The film follows occult student Allan Gray as he arrives in the cursed village of Courtempierre. Gray’s immersion in the town’s supernatural mysteries drives him toward madness, blurring the line between reality and nightmare.
One reading sees the village as a liminal dimension where Gray, already dead, watches its residents decay. A more literal interpretation places a vampire’s curse at the heart of the story, broken only when Gray and his love interest Gisele drive an iron spike through the crone Marguerite Chopin’s heart. Dreyer’s fascination with the supernatural began in childhood, when he discovered occult tomes in his grandmother’s library.
4 Lucifer Rising
Kenneth Anger’s experimental short Lucifer Rising is a psychedelic ode to San Francisco’s late‑1960s counterculture. The film follows Anger’s quest for a modern Lucifer—a bearer of light destined to usher in a new age of freedom. His vision draws heavily from Aleister Crowley’s writings about the forthcoming Age of Horus, as well as from Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, who appears as the Devil in Anger’s related short Invocation of My Demon Brother.
The soundtrack history is equally occult‑laden: convicted murderer and Manson associate Bobby Beausoleil recorded a version, while Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page—an avid Crowley enthusiast—produced another. Marianne Faithful stars as the demon Lilith, cementing the film’s status as Anger’s idiosyncratic take on a new, liberated religion.
3 Simon, King Of The Witches
Bruce Kessler’s 1971 cult flick Simon, King of the Witches looks at first glance like a tongue‑in‑cheek take on the era’s Satanic horror boom. Los Angeles magician Simon Sinestrari (Andrew Prine) attempts to curse the “Establishment” through a series of bizarre rituals, including a goat‑laden, drug‑fueled ceremony with Ultra Violet, one of Andy Warhol’s muses.
Despite its campy veneer, scholars note that the film’s rituals echo genuine occult practices. Simon’s character mirrors the real‑life Californian occultist Poke Runyon, whose ceremonial magic informed many of the movie’s more authentic spellwork.
2 The Holy Mountain
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 surreal epic The Holy Mountain blends Christian mysticism, occult symbolism, and psychedelic stream‑of‑consciousness. The narrative is a kaleidoscopic journey through Tarot archetypes—characters embody the Thief, the Hermit, the Devil, and more—while the Alchemist (played by Jodorowsky) performs a succession of magical rites amid naked women, goats, and bizarre set pieces.
Jodorowsky’s oeuvre consistently mixes occult imagery with absurdist comedy, earning him the label of a Gnostic filmmaker. Alongside his earlier work El Topo, The Holy Mountain has been accused by conspiracy theorists of promoting Illuminati agendas, though the film remains a landmark of avant‑garde occult cinema.
1 Metropolis
Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci‑fi classic Metropolis portrays a futuristic city divided between opulent skyscrapers above and grim underground factories below. The wealthy’s son, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), falls for the poor worker Maria (Brigitte Helm) and descends into the mechanized underworld, where he briefly replaces a fatigued laborer and manually controls a massive clock.
During a catastrophic accident, Freder envisions the factory morphing into a temple dedicated to the ancient demon Moloch—an allusion to child sacrifice in the Old Testament. The mad inventor Rotwang (Heinrich George) later creates a female robot in the image of his lost love Hel; pentagrams are visible in his laboratory, hinting at a deeper magic‑vs‑technology theme. Rotwang’s creation, Hel, is later compared to the Whore of Babylon from Revelation, and the film’s biblical references feed long‑standing Illuminati conspiracy theories.
Lang and co‑author Thea von Harbou were both fascinated by occult matters; von Harbou’s later political leanings were reportedly influenced by her interest in Eastern mysticism.