10 Best Horror Movies With No Supernatural Elements
3. The Wicker Man
Robin Hardy’s folk horror masterpiece admittedly tows the line between the natural and the other. Indeed, it’s a film about a murderous, sun worshipping cult who need to present a human sacrifice to guarantee a bumper crop next harvest.
It’s possible that the immolation of Sergeant Howie does just that, and the following year the people of Summerisle ate like kings. But Hardy’s film is shot with a deeply rational lens, Edward Woodward’s lead character always presented as the one sane man placed within a community gone mad.
Woodward’s Howie is lured to the island to investigate a disappearance, but it’s all too quickly apparent that something - everything - isn’t right. He’s swept along by the creepy hospitality of Christopher Lee’s patriarch, and from there the film is one long descent into madness and ultimately death.
A film much imitated but never bettered, The Wicker Man is a truly visionary piece of filmmaking. In the gruesome finale, we finally see through the eyes of the villagers, for whom the human sacrifice is a moment to celebrate. Despite the flames, it’s truly chilling stuff.