Film

Enys Men

A wildlife volunteer stationed alone on a remote Cornish island begins to lose her grip on reality in this deliberately disorienting folk horror film. Shot on grainy 16mm, it feels like recovered found footage from another era. It's experimental, hypnotic, and deeply unsettling—for viewers willing to surrender control and sit with ambiguity rather than demand answers.

TMDb rating2.8

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The Wailing2016

A Korean masterpiece that uses fog, ritual, and unreliable witnesses to create genuine dread. Like Enys Men, it refuses to explain itself and rewards your uncertainty rather than punishing it.

But At nearly three hours, it demands patience. The plot threads deliberately tangle rather than resolve, which frustrates viewers seeking clear narrative closure.

The Wailing poster

The Lighthouse2019

Isolation, madness, and ambiguity wrapped in stunning black-and-white 35mm. Two men on a rock slowly unravel in ways both psychological and possibly supernatural—same wavelength as Enys Men.

But Wiliem Dafoe's accent and the relentless claustrophobia exhaust some viewers. It's deliberately unsexy and unglamorous in every frame.

The Lighthouse poster

The Wicker Man1973

The original folk horror masterpiece—a lone outsider on an isolated island populated by people with their own logic. It shares Enys Men's sense of reality tilting beneath your feet.

But The ending is famous enough that surprise is gone. Some find the 1970s folk-song interludes charming; others find them a slog.

The Wicker Man poster

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Stalker1979

Both films trust the viewer to sit in genuine uncertainty. Neither explains its world or resolves into comfort. Both are more interested in the texture of consciousness than in narrative mechanics.

Andrei Tarkovsky's science-fiction meditation on desire, faith, and the impossibility of certainty. Two hours of profound, hypnotic strangeness that makes reality feel like an unreliable narrator—exactly Enys Men's ambition but in a completely different register.

But It's glacially slow, in Russian, and has almost no plot in the conventional sense. Patience measured in hours, not minutes.

Stalker poster
More like this (7)

Under the Skin2014

Scarlett Johansson in a deliberately cryptic science-fiction horror film shot in real locations. Like Enys Men, it privileges mood and image over explanation.

But It's glacial and enigmatic to the point of distance. Long stretches with minimal dialogue will test your patience.

Under the Skin poster

A Dark Song2016

Two people in a house attempting a dangerous ritual, with grief and the occult blurred together. Hypnotic and genuinely moving beneath the strangeness.

But It's a two-character chamber piece that moves at its own pace. Viewers impatient with slowburn will find it tedious.

A Dark Song poster

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Yorgos Lanthimos creates clinical horror from family life. The wrongness accumulates quietly until reality feels unsafe—Enys Men's unsettling power in a different shape.

But The stilted dialogue and detached tone alienate many viewers. It prioritizes unease over catharsis or closure.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer poster

Annihilation2018

Scarce, weird science fiction where a team enters a zone where the rules have changed. Mystery and body horror build into genuine cosmic dread.

But The climax divides viewers sharply. Some find it intellectually exciting; others feel it collapses into spectacle.

Annihilation poster

The Banshees of Inisherin2022

Two men on an Irish island as their friendship fractures. It shares Enys Men's atmospheric isolation and the feeling that something unknowable is happening beneath the surface.

But It's a character study disguised as a story. If you need plot momentum and resolution, the slow focus on personality clash will frustrate.

The Banshees of Inisherin poster

Noroi: The Curse2005

Both use isolation and the power of the image to make reality feel fundamentally compromised. Both suggest that some questions, once asked, cannot be unasked.

A Japanese found-footage horror film that builds across a documentary crew's investigation. It accumulates dread through obsessive detail and the mounting sense that the investigators are already doomed.

But Found-footage format feels dated now. It's also genuinely upsetting in ways that feel closer to trauma than entertainment.

Noroi: The Curse poster

The Saddest Music in the World2003

Both shoot on unusual formats (Maddin's hand-tinting, Enys Men's 16mm) to create temporal dislocation. Both suggest that formal strangeness can communicate what plot cannot.

Guy Maddin's surreal, hand-tinted black-and-white film about grief expressed through music and competition. It's experimental and gorgeous and utterly unconcerned with whether you understand it.

But It's aggressively arty and cheerfully indifferent to conventional narrative. The style is so heavy it occasionally overwhelms the emotion.

The Saddest Music in the World poster

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