10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Cults

The undoubted lynchpin of the entire horror cult genre, the pagan worshippers of the Hebridean island of Summerisle have had a huge influence over many movie cults on this list and beyond.

The Wicker Man partly works as well as it does because it is grounded in real world British folk traditions and the revival of Celtic paganism as a belief system within the modern world.

It takes the familiar, if archaic, little Englander tweeness of maypoles and morris dances and puts back in all the uncanny weirdness that most of us seem to have detached from such things. By extrapolating such traditions back to an imagined pagan pre-history, the people of Summerisle ultimately see little difference in the age old traditions of waving hankies and bells, or those of bringing blood and flame.

All that means that the celebratory medieval folk song Sumer Is Icumen In (previously heard on screen in Errol Flynn's Adventures Of Robin Hood) is now forever associated with the sight of a cop being put inside a giant flammable effigy.

The Summerislanders' dedication to their belief is especially disturbing given that it appears to have no foundation in reality. Unlike the Children Of The Corn of the goddess worshippers from Apostle, the people of Summerisle have seen no obvious demonstrations of real supernatural power granting their land fertility, but they believe in it enough to murder nonetheless. Now that's properly creepy.