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.
  • The Medium (2021) — If the family-by-family possession of these rattled you, this is the one to pull down next — Na Hong-jin's cursed documentary watches a hereditary medium's bloodline get eaten alive, and it's the most devastating contagion in the whole run.
  • Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) — The ancestor of everything here: a rage-curse that infects anyone who crosses the threshold and hops victim to victim — watch it to see the 'evil that moves' template these newer films are all working from.
  • Drag Me to Hell (2009) — Sam Raimi doing the Evil Dead sensibility in curse form — a Gypsy hex literally handed off to whoever you can trick into taking it, as nasty and funny-brutal as When Evil Lurks.
  • Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) — Straight from the Evil Dead Rise director, and it runs the same play as these — a child returns from the desert with something incubating inside her that then spreads through the family.
  • Exhuma (2024) — The recent Korean blockbuster to reach for if Incantation and The Medium landed — shamans and a geomancer unearth a grave to stop a hereditary affliction passing down a bloodline.
  • Impetigore (2019) — A bloodline curse you inherit by birthright — the Indonesian village-horror companion to these, where returning home means the curse laid on the whole village comes for you.
  • Relic (2020) — The beloved indie sleeper alongside Oddity — a black rot that creeps through a house and through three generations of women, evil as something literally spreading family member by family member.
  • Sleep (2023) — If the 'demon incubated in a neighbor' idea hooked you, this taut Korean sleeper does it to a marriage — a husband's sleepwalking curdles into something inside him that spreads to the home.