Demonic
The demon is not inside anyone yet. It is in the woods, the cellar, the abbey, and it wants in.
Demonic5 to start
- 1The Nun2018
- 2The Conjuring 22016
- 3The Evil Dead1981
- 4Drag Me to Hell2009
- 5Night of the Demon1957
What defines it
- Era
- 1957 to today
- Mood
- malice, jolts, blasphemy
Demonic horror gives evil a face and lets it hunt. Where the possession film keeps the demon inside a person and the occult film keeps it behind a ritual, this form sets it loose: in the woods around a cabin, in a council house, in an abbey, on a strip of parchment passed across a table. The demon has a name, a grin and a plan, and the film is about how close it is allowed to get.
The rules are about a hunter. A demon, named or nameable, with a will of its own and an appetite for the living. A way in: a book read aloud, a curse spoken, a door opened, a sin committed. A set of victims who learn the rules too late. And a shape, because the demonic film, unlike its cousins, is willing to show you the thing. Horns, a habit, a grin, a face at the window.
The form's elegant ancestor is Night of the Demon (1957), Jacques Tourneur's adaptation of M. R. James, which spends ninety minutes on a skeptic who has been given a deadline and then shows the demon anyway. The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) made the demon mainstream, one inside a girl and one inside a boy. Then Sam Raimi set it loose: The Evil Dead (1981) read the Book of the Dead aloud in a Tennessee cabin and the Deadites came out of the trees, and Evil Dead II (1987) did it again with jokes. Lamberto Bava's Demons (1985) sealed a Berlin cinema audience in with them. The 2000s brought Drag Me to Hell (2009), Raimi's return, and the 2010s built a franchise on a demon's name: Valak, first in The Conjuring 2 (2016) and then in The Nun (2018) and its sequel. Sinister (2012) added Bughuul, and Evil Dead Rise (2023) brought the Deadites to an apartment block.
The signature techniques are about the face. The figure in the painting that has moved. The grin held one beat too long. The voice from the cellar that knows your name. The demon's point of view, rushing through the trees. And the rule, delivered by someone who has read the book, that tells you how long is left.
- malice
- jolts
- blasphemy
Malice with a face: the demonic film scares by giving evil a shape and a grin, and by letting it hunt rather than wait.
- Axis
- Scare Score
- And
- Loved it
How it scares
This is malice with a jump scare attached. Demonic horror is one of the form's loudest branches: the demon wants to be seen, and the film obliges, so the fear is less the slow dread of a ghost story than the shock of a face where there should not be one. The Raimi branch pushes the shock until it becomes glee, with splatter and camera moves and a hero who fights back. The Wan branch holds the shock longer and quieter, with a painting, a hallway and a nun.
The form gets to viewers who scare at a face, and to anyone raised with the idea of hell, lapsed or otherwise. It gets to people who need the threat to be visible, which is why it is often the branch of supernatural horror that works on viewers who shrug at ghosts. It is less effective on people who find the demon silly once it is shown, and some do; a rubber face can break the spell. Those viewers tend to prefer Night of the Demon, where the thing is on screen for a minute and in your head for the rest.
How to rank it in Gasper
You answer which was scarier a handful of times, and the film finds its place among everything you have ranked. Loved it? Heart it.
- 1
Demonic films make for loud head-to-heads. You answer "How scary was it?" with Terrifying, Some scares or Barely flinched, and then "Which was scarier?" against films you gave the same answer. The Nun against a haunted house is a demon that hunts against a house that waits; The Evil Dead against a slasher is a cabin full of Deadites against a man with a knife. Answer for the one that got your heart going and kept it there, and the film settles in your rankings within a handful of comparisons.
- 2
Scores on this page swing with the branch. The Conjuring 2 and The Nun land as Terrifying for a lot of people, because they are built from jolts; The Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell land as Some scares for many, because the laugh comes with the scream. Your first answer sets the band and the comparisons settle the order inside it, so a demon comedy you grinned through is only weighed against the other films that did the same, and its Scare Score, 0 to 10 with one decimal, says so.
- 3
The heart is busy here, because the form produces favorites. The Evil Dead is a "Loved this?" heart for most people regardless of where it scored, and that is the heart working as intended. If a franchise jolt machine got you harder than you would like the feed to see, Stealth mode keeps the rank private and still counts it toward the Taste tab, where Demonic turns up as a Top subgenre for viewers who like their evil with a face.
- 4
In Discover, the Demonic shelf sits beside Possession, Occult and Supernatural, and the Subgenre filter narrows any search to it. The Community Scare, the average of everyone who ranked a film, runs high on the Wan branch and middling on the Raimi branch, which is a fair map of how the crowd meets the form, and a good way to find out whether you are the viewer who screams or the one who cheers.
Where to go next
Possession is the sibling page, where the demon gets inside. Occult is where the demon is summoned on purpose, with Hellraiser and Rosemary's Baby. Supernatural horror is the parent category. Haunted houses share The Conjuring 2, which is a house film until it is not. Splatter and gore has claimed The Evil Dead, and comedy horror has claimed its sequel.
For deeper cuts, try Demons (1985), Lamberto Bava's film about a Berlin cinema audience turning, one by one, into the thing on the screen, scored with heavy metal and played for speed. Prince of Darkness (1987) is John Carpenter's demon film by way of quantum physics, a church basement and a canister of something green. And The Last Exorcism (2010) is a found footage film about a preacher who has stopped believing, which is demonic horror right up to a last act that belongs on the cults page.
Questions about demonic
- Where the demon is. Possession is the demon inside a person, and the film is about getting it out. Demonic horror is the demon loose in the world, in a house, a forest, an abbey, hunting people from the outside. The Evil Dead does both, and Gasper keeps the shelves separate because the fear is different.
- They use the furniture of religion, crucifixes, Latin, relics, nuns, because a demon needs something to be against. Very few require faith from the viewer. The Nun is set in an abbey and plays like an adventure; Drag Me to Hell has a seance and plays like a comedy.
- Because a name is a rule, and rules are what let a film build dread. Valak in The Nun and The Conjuring 2, Bughuul in Sinister, the Lamia in Drag Me to Hell. Once a character learns the name, they can learn what it wants, and the audience can start counting down.
- Drag Me to Hell. It is frightening in bursts and funny the rest of the time, and the curse has rules you can follow. Night of the Demon is almost entirely suggestion. The Evil Dead is for when you want to be shouted at.
What is the difference between demonic and possession horror?
Where the demon is. Possession is the demon inside a person, and the film is about getting it out. Demonic horror is the demon loose in the world, in a house, a forest, an abbey, hunting people from the outside. The Evil Dead does both, and Gasper keeps the shelves separate because the fear is different.
Subgenres like this one
- SubgenrePossessionSomething gets inside a person and uses them, and the people who love them have to decide what is left.
- SubgenreOccultSomeone opened the door on purpose: rituals, deals, puzzle boxes and the neighbors who have been planning this for years.
- SubgenreSupernaturalGhosts, demons, curses and anything else that breaks the rules of the physical world to get at the living.
Keep reading
- FeatureHead-to-head rankingAnswer which film was scarier a few times and Gasper places it in your rankings. You never type a number.
- FeatureScare scoreA measure out of 10 of how scary a film was for you, read from your own ranked list and shown in skulls.
- GlossaryJump scareA jump scare is a sudden image or sound, usually after a quiet stretch, designed to make the audience physically flinch.
- GlossaryDreadDread is the sustained, building fear that something terrible is coming, the slow counterpart to the jump scare in horror.
- GlossarySplatterSplatter is horror in which graphic, often deliberately excessive gore is the main attraction rather than a side effect of the story.
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