10 Most Underrated Psychological Horror Movies

Okay, so a handful of WhatCulture lists have recommended this film in the past. But it remains wildly underrated.

Besides Possum, the 2018 feature debut of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace creator Mathew Holness, is the sort of deeply unsettling movie you feel the need to pass on like The Ring's cursed videotape in order to process its intense and horrific themes.

This brutal British film sees the world through the eyes of a troubled puppeteer who returns to his childhood home and is haunted by trauma.

This is trauma that is handily represented in the film by the titular puppet, a grotesque spider-legged, death-mask-faced monstrosity. Moving in an unsettling, jagged manner, Possum is the film's most unforgettably unpleasant creation.

However, the strained and mean-spirited dynamic between the near-mute puppeteer played by Sean Harris and his abusive uncle soon reveals truths much more disturbing and grounded than a killer puppet. The movie is an intense and singularly upsetting psychological horror, but from its seventies-indebted aesthetic to its jangling, dissonant score, it is a testament to the sub genre's power to unsettle and affect its audience.