Film

The Nun

Other titles called The Nun: the 2018 film.

A Spanish horror film where vengeful ghosts of abused schoolgirls hunt down their former tormentors. It's a revenge narrative dressed in religious dread, all shadowy cloisters and sudden violence. Visceral and genuinely unsettling rather than subtle—for viewers who want their scares to leave marks.

TMDb rating2.9

If you liked this

Martyrs2008

A masterwork of French extremist cinema that uses religious trauma and bodily horror to explore culpability and survival. One of the most harrowing revenge narratives ever made.

But It's relentlessly bleak and graphically violent. Some scenes are designed to punish you. Not cathartic—the opposite.

Martyrs poster

The Orphanage2007

Spanish gothic horror with the same melancholic atmosphere and institutional cruelty. Ghosts here emerge from genuine childhood tragedy, making each appearance emotionally complicated.

But The pacing is deliberate to the point of slowness. You need patience for the dread to accumulate.

The Orphanage poster

High Tension2003

French horror that prioritizes visceral scares and moral ambiguity. The violence is shocking and the twist genuinely destabilizes what you thought you were watching.

But The gender politics are troubling and the logic collapses under scrutiny. Some will find it misogynistic.

High Tension poster

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

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Audition2000

Both films hinge on the vulnerability of people within institutions (school, audition) being weaponized against them by authority figures. Both use genre expectations as misdirection.

Takashi Miike's Japanese masterpiece about a man auditioning young women for a fake film role. Starts as romantic comedy, becomes surrealist torture nightmare. The tonal shift is shattering.

But The violence is prolonged and absurdist rather than cathartic. It's also deliberately artificial in a way that keeps you at a distance.

Audition poster
More like this (7)

Let's Scare Jessica to Death1971

An American cult classic where a woman's grip on sanity fractures in a house by a lake. Eerie, paranoid, and interested in female victimhood as horror.

But It's deliberately ambiguous whether anything supernatural is happening. The uncertainty frustrates people looking for clarity.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death poster

House by the Lake2017

Haunted-house film where a family must reckon with the violent history buried in their new home. German production, methodical and genuinely unsettling.

But It takes its time. The scares are sparse and the mood matters more than the shocks.

House by the Lake poster

The Skin I Live In2011

Spanish thriller about obsession, trauma, and bodily horror. Beautifully shot and structurally audacious—nothing is what it initially appears to be.

But The central premise involves sexual violence and bodily modification. It's ethically murky in ways that won't sit right with everyone.

The Skin I Live In poster

The Machinist2004

Psychological horror starring Christian Bale at his most gaunt. A man's past guilt literally wastes him away. Paranoid and nightmarish.

But The protagonist is despicable and stays that way. There's no redemption arc—only collapse.

The Machinist poster

Repulsion1965

Polanski's descent into psychological horror through a woman's mental breakdown. The film *becomes* her paranoia. Formally inventive and deeply disturbing.

But Black and white, 1965, deliberately experimental. Modern audiences often find it slow and the gender dynamics dated.

Repulsion poster

Raw2017

French-Belgian horror about a vegetarian girl who develops cannibalistic urges. Grotesque, funny, and genuinely original. A coming-of-age film that happens to be deeply wrong.

But It's graphically gory. The body horror is intentional and relentless. Some will find it exploitative rather than artistic.

Raw poster

The Secret of Kells2009

Both use religious institutions and their aesthetic (manuscripts, vestments, shadow) as the visual language of dread. Both find horror in devotion twisted wrong.

An Irish animated film about a boy illuminating a sacred manuscript in a monastery besieged by darkness. Visually rapturous, genuinely creepy without being gory, and structured like a dark fairy tale.

But It's a children's film, which throws people off. The pacing is its own and it won't satisfy anyone looking for conventional horror beats.

The Secret of Kells poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by