10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Cults

In just two movies director Ari Aster has proved himself a master of stories about dysfunctional families and relationships wrapped up in some really creepy cult stuff. Following from the suburban devil worshippers of Hereditary, Aster last year gave us the sun soaked Swedish pagans of Midsommar's Hårga.

Aster's Scandi-cultists offer a veritable smörgåsbord of the horror movie cult tropes on this list: remote rural communities, vulnerable outsiders whose existent grief and trauma are easy to exploit, seriously retro costumes, psychedelic hallucinogens, extended folk song and dance performances, weird symbols and occult texts, maypoles, fertility rituals, ceremonial suicide, people being burnt alive. It's got it all and a bear to boot.

That's not to say that the Hårga offer nothing new to potential converts of horror movie cults. Aster doesn't just expose the darkness beneath the perennial sunshine of this Swedish pastoral idyll, he also gives his cult story an outcome which is unsettling in an unusual way.

While some movie heroes' encounters with cults lead to them fighting back and others to them becoming the cult's sacrificial victim, Midsommar's Dani does neither. She converts. The murderous cult gives her a place in the world and she joins the Hårga. Maybe that's the most terrifying cult victory of all.