Two that I watched fairly recently that absolutely brought me out in heebie jeebies from the tops of my ears to the soles of my feet.
A Dark Song, about a woman enlisting the help of this sort of backwoods magus sort of fellow to help her perform a prolonged and increasingly intense ritual geared towards summoning an angel. Slow burn sort of a deal with things becoming ever more fraught as the ritual progresses, culminating in some of the most bizarre and discomforting imagery I’ve seen in a horror film any time recently. It’s not easily forgotten.
Hagazussa, sometimes called Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse, which is another slow burn, this one all about a witch’s curse that may or may not have been passed down from mother to daughter when the daughter was but wee. It’s absolutely fucking beautiful and beguiling and incredibly unsettling when the notion takes it. Redolent of Viy or things like this at times, or The Witch, but on the whole it doesn’t feel all that much like either. Very much its own thing, and easily one of the best films I’ve seen this year, although it’s not a (2019), it’s a (2017) regardless of what anyone tries to tell you.
