Sightlines · a viewing thread

Cursed and Contagious

Watch these back to back for how each imagines evil as something that moves — a curse handed off by a smile, a demon incubated in a neighbor, a possession creeping family member by family member.

A run of the last few years' most-talked-about horror, from multiplex hits (the Smile films, the new Evil Dead) to a brutal Argentine cult favorite and a beloved indie sleeper — accessible on the surface but genuinely disturbing, so save them for a night you're ready to be rattled.

• Smile (2022)
• Smile 2 (2024)
• Evil Dead Burn (2026)
• Oddity (2024)
• When Evil Lurks (2023)
• Evil Dead Rise (2023) — The film Evil Dead Burn descends from — a Deadite possession clawing through a mother and her three kids floor by floor in a condemned tower, the same demon-jumps-from-body-to-body dread these run on.
• Incantation (2022) — If When Evil Lurks and the Smile films landed, this is the recent one to pull down next — a broken religious taboo passed hand to hand and even through the screen to you, a mother fighting to keep the curse from taking her daughter.