Film

The Entity

Name: The Entity
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Released: 1982
Cast: Barbara Hershey, Ron Silver, David Labiosa, George Coe, Margaret Blye

A woman is sexually assaulted by an invisible entity in her own home. The Entity treats this horror with seriousness rather than exploitation, anchored by Barbara Hershey's committed performance. It's a film about trauma and disbelief that happens to be genuinely frightening, not despite but because of its refusal to look away.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to psychological horror that stays with one woman's ordeal, where the question of whether the terror is supernatural or buried in her past keeps the tension tight.

Skip it if you find the rape at its centre more than you can sit with, since the film lingers on her humiliation and offers little relief from it.

What it asks of you: Patience with a long, deliberate running time of about two hours, and a tolerance for scenes that stay grim and unhurried rather than building to frequent jolts.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Poltergeist1982

A family's home becomes a battleground with supernatural forces. Like The Entity, it couples intimate domestic terror with genuine scares and raises serious questions beneath the horror—here about parental responsibility and loss.

But The special effects, while impressive for 1982, can feel dated now. The pacing occasionally favours spectacle over sustained dread.

The Invisible Man1933

A man rendered invisible by science becomes a monster. It shares The Entity's core horror—a violation you cannot see coming or prevent—but inverts the power dynamic and explores how invisibility corrupts the invisible.

But It's a product of its era in pacing and dialogue. The black-and-white cinematography won't appeal to everyone, and the horror is more suggestive than visceral.

Carnival of Souls1962

A woman survives a car crash and begins experiencing supernatural intrusions nobody else can perceive. It shares The Entity's claustrophobic paranoia and the maddening experience of being disbelieved by those closest to you.

But The budget was tiny; it looks it. The acting is uneven, and the narrative can feel meandering until its final revelation.

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

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Eraserhead1977

Both films use the body as a site of invasion and violation, but where The Entity grounds itself in recognizable reality, Eraserhead dissolves reality itself. They're inverse approaches to the same primal terror.

David Lynch's black-and-white nightmare about a man who may or may not be responsible for an unspeakable birth. Like The Entity, it's a film about bodily horror and the loss of control, but it operates in pure dream logic—your body becomes a landscape you cannot navigate or escape.

But It's aggressively inaccessible. If you need narrative or logic, you will find this alienating rather than frightening. Many viewers find it pretentious rather than profound.

Possession1981

A marriage disintegrates as something genuinely alien invades both the relationship and the wife's body. Andrzej Żuławski creates body horror and psychological terror that mirrors The Entity's unflinching examination of violation and bodily autonomy.

But It's deliberately grotesque and frequently gross. The film's themes are so dark and the images so extreme that many will find it unwatchable rather than thrilling.

Don't Look Now1973

A grieving couple in Venice becomes entangled with something dangerous they cannot quite understand. It shares The Entity's sense of threat creeping into private moments and relationships, with equally strong performances grounding the supernatural dread.

But The pacing is glacial by modern standards. You have to surrender to its mood rather than expect plot momentum.

Insidious2011

A family's child slips into a comatose state after encountering something in the dark. It revives The Entity's approach of taking the supernatural threat seriously as a genuine trauma, with strong ensemble acting and inventive scares.

But It spawned five sequels and a franchise, which means you might find it harder to watch without cynicism. The jump-scares, though effective, feel formulaic in hindsight.

The Exorcist1973

A girl is possessed by something other, and those around her fracture under the strain. Like The Entity, it's a carefully made film that trusts its premise and its audience, building dread through character work before unleashing genuine horror.

But At two hours twenty, it demands patience. Some scenes (particularly the medical sequences) are disturbing in ways unrelated to the supernatural, which can feel gratuitous.

Mulholland Drive2001

A woman loses her identity after a car accident, and reality fragments. It shares The Entity's interest in how trauma distorts perception and what happens when you cannot trust your own mind or the world around you.

But It's deliberately opaque and refuses to explain itself. If you need narrative clarity, this will frustrate you intensely.

Bug2007

Two people meet in a motel room and descend together into paranoia and delusion. William Friedkin directs with claustrophobic precision, and like The Entity, it examines how fear and isolation can warp your grip on what's real.

But It's punishing and airless—two hours in a motel room watching sanity erode. There's no release, no catharsis, only escalating dread and filth.

The Wailing2016

Both films pivot on disbelief—what happens when authorities dismiss the victim's account. But The Wailing expands this to an entire community's capacity to know truth, asking whether perception itself can be trusted.

A Korean village spirals into hysteria when a mysterious illness arrives with a stranger. It's a masterwork of ambiguity and paranoia that builds to genuine transcendence. The Entity's question—what is real?—becomes metaphysical and moral.

But At two hours forty-two minutes, it's exhausting. It demands active interpretation; nothing is handed to you. Some will call it brilliant, others pretentious.

Under the Skin2014

Both films use genre to examine bodily vulnerability and the terror of being selected as prey. The Entity is a social realist horror film; Under the Skin is science fiction art cinema. They're the same story told in completely opposite registers.

Scarlett Johansson, in minimal dialogue, plays an alien luring lonely men to their doom in Scotland. Like The Entity, it's about predation and vulnerability, but inverts the gender dynamics entirely. It's hypnotic, unsettling, and formally audacious.

But Nothing happens in conventional ways. Much of it is silent and observational. If you need plot momentum or clear narrative purpose, you will hate this.