Film

Heartland

Name: Heartland
Genre: Horror
Released: 2012
Cast: Eléonore Hendricks, Erin Falls, Augusta Dayton, Caralyn Thomas, Dawn Batson

Other titles called Heartland: the 1981 film, the 2007 series (CBC Gem).

Horror

A three-minute fashion film by Josh Safdie that abandons the runway for something far stranger: a haunting plunge into a women's cult in late-1970s Los Angeles. Commissioned by Vena Cava, it's experimental and atmospheric—less narrative than mood and texture, all unsettling beauty and dread. For anyone who loves horror that breathes, art films, or Safdie's particular vision of creeping menace.

If you liked this

Under the Skin2014

Slow-burn sci-fi horror with Scarlett Johansson that trades plot for pure unease. Hypnotic cinematography and a synth score that lives in your skin. You feel watched.

But Long passages with almost no dialogue, and the ending refuses satisfaction. Demands patience and rewards it unevenly.

Suspiria1977

Dario Argento's masterpiece is exactly the late-70s aesthetic that Heartland echoes: hallucinogenic colour, a dance academy hiding something monstrous, and a synth score that is its own character.

But The plot is thin and the dialogue is dubbed. It exists to disturb you visually and sonically, not to make sense.

The Wailing2016

A South Korean folk-horror epic where nothing is what it seems. Morally ambiguous, gorgeously shot, and uses landscape and ritual the way Heartland uses atmosphere—as a character itself.

But At nearly three hours with a deliberately obscure ending, it demands engagement and second viewings. Not comforting.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Heartland

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both use late-twentieth-century Los Angeles as a character—beautiful, hollow, predatory. Both are more interested in mood and dislocation than plot. Both find the uncanny in everyday spaces and bodies.

David Lynch's fractured LA noir about a woman losing herself in the city. Like Heartland but expanded to feature length: the dream logic, the female bodies, the way LA itself becomes monstrous and seductive.

But The plot disintegrates halfway through. If you need coherence, this breaks the contract. Some find it genius; others find it exhausting manipulation.

The Fits2016

A feature about girls and a dance crew in Cincinnati, shot like a ghost story without ghosts. Incredibly assured debut that feels semi-documentary but builds to something unsettling and unexplained.

But The mystery is never solved. If you need answers, this will frustrate you. Very quiet and observational.

High Life2018

Claire Denis's sci-fi nightmare with Robert Pattinson. Grotesque, sensual, utterly unclassifiable. Prose poem of a film where every image is disturbing and beautiful at once.

But Willfully obscure and bleak. Has a baby being harmed on screen. Some viewers find it pretentious; some find it brilliant. No middle ground.

The Neon Demon2016

Nicolas Winding Refn's LA horror about fashion and beauty. Neon aesthetics, a synth score, gorgeous and deeply nasty. The surface is dazzling; underneath, it's about consumption and rot.

But The characters are thin, dialogue can feel arch, and the misogyny is sometimes hard to parse as critique. Also quite violent.

A Dark Song2016

Occult chamber film: a woman and a man in a house trying to contact something divine or demonic. Intimate, patient, and genuinely moving beneath the strangeness.

But Very slow and very long. Dialogue-heavy. The payoff is emotional rather than horrific, which some see as cop-out, some as transcendent.

In Fabric2018

Both are fashion-adjacent works (Heartland commissioned by Vena Cava) that treat clothing and the body as sites of ritual, control, and transgression. Both use visual beauty to make ugliness more unsettling.

Peter Strickland's surrealist British horror about a bewitched dress. Experimental, witty, visually baroque. Uses fabric, texture, and the female body as horror language—like Safdie through a very British art-horror lens.

But Deliberately bizarre and oblique. If you want horror to scare you, not puzzle you, skip it. The humour derails tension for some viewers.