HagazussaMovies like Hagazussa
- Key Features:
- Witchcraft, Isolation, Medieval setting, Folk horror, Religious persecution, Mental breakdown, Darkness, Supernatural, Paranoia, Historical drama, Slow burn, 16th century
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Fans of folk horror, Viewers interested in historical settings, Those who enjoy slow-burn thrillers
- Emotional Arc:
- Isolation → Paranoia → Madness
Hagazussa

In the 15th century, a young goatherd living alone in a mountain hut feels a dark presence in the woods.
Hagazussa
In the 1600s, an overzealous clergy hauls innocent women in front of tribunals, forces them to confess to imaginary witchery, and engages in brutal torture and persecution of their subjects.

In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.

A feature-length anthology film. They are known as myths, lore, and folktales. Created to give logic to mankind’s darkest fears, these stories laid the foundation for what we now know as the horror genre.

1975, Swiss Alps: In a remote mountain village, a beautiful and mysterious woman shows up. Only the village policeman takes care of the strange woman and tries to find out who she is. There are hints that she came from the Höhenalp Alp, where herdsmen do unthinkable things to get the company of women. Many dark truths are revealed that should better have remained hidden. A tragedy of lust, insanity and murder is brought to a seemlingly pure and perfect world. It is the beginning of a nightmare of religious insanity, hypocrisy, abuse and belief in demons, who destroys a young family and brings a whole village to destruction.

In 1630, a farmer relocates his family to a remote plot of land on the edge of a forest where strange, unsettling things happen. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, each family member's faith, loyalty and love are tested in shocking ways.

Betriek lives at the edge of a peat bog in the North of the Netherlands. When she and her family are attacked by a random stranger one night, Betriek sets out to find an explanation. The more she digs, the more she becomes convinced that she is being hunted by something ancient.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.

French Basque Country, year 1609. The men of a small fishing village have gone to sea. Judge Rostegui, who has been charged by the king with ridding the country of the devil's wiles, arrests Ana and her friends and accuses them of witchcraft.

Rural England, 1865. Katherine, suffocated by her loveless marriage to a bitter man and restrained by his father's tyranny, unleashes an irresistible force within her, so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

In an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, a young feral witch accidentally kills a peasant. She assumes the peasant's shape to see what life is like in her skin, igniting a deep seated curiosity to experience life inside the bodies of others.

A group of students head off for a snowboarding adventure on an untouched piece of land. When their SUV mysteriously stalls in a brutal snowstorm they are not only faced with the reality of freezing to death but a fate even more horrifying. For they have become stranded in Stoughton Valley, home of some Witch Trials even more horrendous than Salem, and are being hunted by a supernatural creature determined to keep them there.

In the aftermath of the Great Plague and amidst the subsequent witch-hunts against women, a young widow grapples with the tragic death of her husband in a society completely consumed by fear and death. Because she rejects the advances of her landlord, she is falsely accused of being a witch and thrown in jail for a crime she didn’t commit. She must endure physical persecution at the hands of England’s most ruthless witch-hunter and face her own inner demons as the devil himself starts to work his way into her mind.

After reluctantly moving to the German Alps with her father and his new family, Gretchen discovers that their new town hides sinister secrets, as she's plagued by strange noises and frightening visions of a woman pursuing her.

A frustrated, angry teenage girl awakens something in the woods when she naively performs an occult ritual to invoke a witch to kill her mother.

Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.

Using almost no dialogue, the film follows a number of residents (both human and animal) of a small rural community in Hungary – an old man with hiccups, a shepherdess and her sheep, an old woman who may or may not be up to no good, some folk-singers at a wedding, etc. While most of the film is a series of vignettes, there is a sinister and often barely perceptible subplot involving murder.

Swiss girl Adelheid 'Heidi' is orphaned young. Aunt Detie brings her to grandpa Alp and his wife, who live isolated in the Alps since his murder charge. Heidi soon takes to the wild country, especially accompanying young goatherd Peter. Grandpa refuses to send her to school in the city, but aunt Detie returns and forces him to give in. She's sent to a posh lady in Frankfurt, where she'll be a companion for crippled daughter Clara after school hours.

The Marquis d’Urfé finds refuge in the home of a strange family after becoming lost in a hostile forest while working as an emissary for the King of France.

Anna is a 16-year old in a village where women are accused of witchcraft. It's based on the witch hunts on Åland, Finland in the 1600s.

A teen and her mother live simply in a home in the woods, spending their time making rock music. A chance encounter with a fellow teen causes her to uncover a connection between her family and witchcraft, which causes a rift with her mother.

Strange cravings and hallucinations befall a young couple after seeking shelter in the home of an aging farmer and her peculiar son.

Lizzy is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the 19th-century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, and when a newlywed couple arrive at a nearby homestead, their presence amplifies Lizzy's fears, setting into motion a shocking chain of events.

A group of archaeologists uncover a strange structure in Northern Canada, dating over ten thousand years before the present. The team finds themselves isolated when their communication systems fail and it's not long before they begin to feel the effects of the solitude.

In 1700s Austria, a witch-hunter's apprentice has doubts about the righteousness of witch-hunting when he witnesses the brutality, the injustice, the falsehood, the torture and the arbitrary killing that go with the job.

Deep within the darkness of secluded forest land in rural Ireland dwells an ancient evil. Feared by the nearby superstitious villagers as cursed creatures who prey upon the lost, their secrets have been kept from civilization and remain on their hallowed ground. But when a conservationist from London moves in with his wife and infant child in order to survey the land for future construction, his actions unwittingly disturb the horde of demonic forces. Alone in a remote wilderness, he must now ensure his family's survival from their relentless attacks.

In a poor Estonian village, a group of peasants use magic and folk remedies to survive the winter, and a young woman tries to get a young man to love her.

In 1980s East Germany, Barbara is a Berlin doctor banished to a country medical clinic for applying for an exit visa. Deeply unhappy with her reassignment and fearful of her co-workers as possible Stasi informants, Barbara stays aloof, especially from the good natured clinic head, Andre.

When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.

A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.

Lucía and her son live isolated from society in a flat place where there’s practically no life. The small family unit formed by mother and son hardly ever receives visitors, and their goal is to lead a quiet existence. At first they succeed, but the appearance of a mysterious, violent creature that starts stalking their small house will put the relationship that unites them to the test.

A father survives a plane crash in rural Appalachia, but becomes suspicious of the elderly couple who take him in to nurse him back to health with the ancient remedies.

A mysterious — and suspicious — run of ill fortune plagues a teenage girl and her mother and sister on their hillside farm in this folk story set in the dark hills of Wales during the industrial revolution.

A story about Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman, who lives alone in the Klodzko Valley where a series of mysterious crimes are committed. Duszejko is convinced that she knows who (or what) is the murderer, but nobody believes her.

Following a nervous breakdown, Gwen takes up the job of head teacher in the small village of Haddaby. There she can benefit from the tranquillity and peace, enabling her to recover fully. But under the facade of idyllic country life she slowly unearths the frightening reality of village life in which the inhabitants are followers of a menacing satanic cult with the power to inflict indiscriminate evil and death if crossed.

Ten years after the Black Death devastated the country, a poor family sets out on a journey to search for better living conditions. In a deserted mountain pass, they are attacked by a gang of ruthless killer thieves. The only one spared is 19 year old Signe. She is taken prisoner, and the gang brings her back to their camp. Here, she soon learns that they have a fate worse than death in store for her, and realises that her only hope is to escape.

Set in the beautiful winter landscape of Norway, Haunted follows Catherine as she travels back to her old family estate after her father's death. When locals start telling stories of disappearances and possible murders, she is forced to confront her family's mysterious past.

In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro's pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei's desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.

The Ötztal Alps, more than 5300 years ago. A Neolithic clan leader must avenge the massacre of his people and theft of his holy shrine.

Stranded in the remote countryside after wrecking their car, a couple seeking to start over discovers that there's no escape from the sins of their past.

A writer secludes himself in the mountains and falls in lust with local Berta. After realizing the oddities of the rural community the author starts to question the lines between reality and fiction.

A group of college friends reunite for a trip to the forest, but encounter a menacing presence in the woods that's stalking them.

In the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian Mountains a woman is traveling with a small boy in a horse and cart, looking to punish those who once abused her. For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Órban serves as a living reminder.

In a 15th century village, a woman is accused of witchcraft and put to death. Her beautiful older daughter knows the real reason for the execution lies in the lord's sexual desire for her mother.

Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities.

Residents of a small rural town discover that a demon is about to be born among them. They desperately try to escape before the evil is born, but it may be too late.

In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.

A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with Jorgos.

An old monastery in a small, remote village in Suffolk, England has been haunted by a local legend for centuries. Left in ruin and shrouded by the mystery of a dark spirit that wills young couples to suicide, the place has been avoided for years, marked only by a twisted, ancient tree with an ominous hollow said to be the home of great evil. When four friends on holiday explore the local folklore, they realize that belief in a myth can quickly materialize into reality, bringing horror to life for the town.

While vacationing in the countryside at his childhood home, a woman suddenly reveals to her husband that she is expecting a child – but not his.

Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.

A few days before Christmas, traveling entertainer Marc Stevens is stuck at nightfall in a remote wood in the swampy Hautes Fagnes region of Liège when his van breaks down. An odd chap who's looking for a lost dog then leads Marc to a shuttered inn.

It is 1595. Brutal wars have just ended in an uneasy peace between Protestant Sweden and Orthodox Russia. We focus on the spiritual defeats of two conquered Finnish brothers, one a hardened near-psychopathic war hero, the other a gentle scientist in an age with no use for such men. They find themselves in the swampy interior, demarcating the new border with a unit of sadistic Russians.

Louise and Kasper want to become parents, but Louise cannot have children. She seals a pact with her Romanian maid, Elena, to bear her child, but things don't turn out quite as planned...

A group of American teens comes to Ireland to visit a friend who takes them on a camping trip in search of the local, fabled magic mushrooms. When the psychedelics start taking hold, the panicked friends are attacked by ghostly creatures; but how can they determine whether what they are experiencing is reality or hallucination?

1945. A U.S. military cargo plane loses control and violently crashes behind enemy lines in the middle of the German black forest. Major Johnson sends a squad of his bravest soldiers on a rescue mission to retrieve the top-secret material the plane was carrying, led by Sergeants Brewer and Walsh. They soon discover hanged Nazi soldiers and other dead bodies bearing ancient, magical symbols. Suddenly their compasses fail, their perceptions twist and straying from the group leads to profound horrors as they are attacked by a powerful, supernatural force.

When a supernatural pit worshipped by a remote community in the woods demands a new blood sacrifice, a young woman struggles to find a way to survive as the pit lashes out in anger.

Its the summer of 1974. Four friends have planned a recreational weekend hiking and camping in the forest. At a remote truck stop they pick up an anxious hitchhiker who only after a short ride demands they stop the vehicle. She is clearly frightened of somethingbut what she cant begin to describe in her carsick terror. Suddenly the group are ambushed and left unconscious.

A 14th century Crusader returns with his comrade to a homeland devastated by the Black Plague. The Church commands the two knights to transport a witch to a remote abbey, where monks will perform a ritual in hopes of ending the pestilence.

When the daughter of the town's new priest goes missing during the harvest festival, a desperate search begins, uncovering the town's dark history and resurfacing tales of a mysterious, malevolent spirit that demands sacrifice.

In the 1930s, a young reverend and his family are forced to confront their worst fears when they discover their new home holds a horrifying secret.

Carroll Baker stars in this psychedelic shocker about a mysterious witch who casts a spell over attractive, youthful fashion photographer Valentina Rosselli. Thrust into a world of sadism, Valentina must figure out whether the torture being inflicted on her is because of one woman's twisted agenda … or a curse known as Baba Yaga.

A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn't quite what it seems--and neither is the friend who issued the invitation.

Aliide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.

Norwegian folklore turns out to be real when Leo and Elvis encounter a girl called Thale in a basement. A regular cleaning job turns into a struggle for survival, while they're trying to figure out what or who Thale is. Could Thale be a huldra? A seductive forest spirit who appears from the front to be a beautiful young woman, but who also has a cow's tale and whose back appears to be like a hollowed out tree. The huldra has been known to offer rewards to those who satisfy them sexually, while death to those who fail to do so and are also prone to stealing human babies.

Young urban couple Ed and Sarah are set to begin a new life when they move from London into an isolated borders Scottish farmhouse. After falling in love with the 19th century Castle Farm and seeing its potential as a fixer-upper they are anxious to get started on the renovations. In bed on their first night Sarah thinks she can hear noises in the darkness but Ed is disbelieving saying it’s her imagination playing tricks. Persisting in her fear they are not alone in the house, she forces Ed to investigate. When he doesn’t return after a scarily long period, she goes downstairs to investigate only to be confronted by a welcoming committee of masked intruders. As she desperately searches for Ed, a terrifying game of cat and mouse ensues with the mysterious assailants. But what do they want and what horrors do they have planned for the two newcomers?

After witnessing a grotesque murder at a party in her new town, a teenager starts having strange visions and bizarre desires.

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

In the Bolivian altiplano, Virginio and Sisa, an elderly Quechua couple who have lived a quiet life for years, face an impossible dilemma during an unusually long drought: resist or be defeated by the hostile environment and the relentless passage of time.

A seminary student on monastery holiday kills an old witch in a remote village. The hag then transforms into a beautiful young woman whose dying wish is for him to watch over her wake for three nights. With terrors occurring and his faith waning, he reads prayers on the overnight watch and tries to survive the supernatural encounters.

A pregnant woman and her husband are taken in by a farmer and his wife after crashing their car in the Scottish countryside. Once inside, they realize their hosts’ daughter is a missing child from the news years earlier. Things take a sinister twist when the farmer and his wife inform the couple they intend to keep their baby once born.

As the plague decimates medieval Europe, rumours circulate of a village immune from the plague. There is talk of a necromancer who leads the village and is able to raise the dead. A fearsome knight joined by a cohort of soldiers and a young monk are charged by the church to investigate. Their journey is filled with danger, but it's upon entering the village that their true horror begins.

It's 1348. The plague has brutally hit Florence. A group of then young people, seven women and three men, rebel against the feeling of death that is about to swallow them. They flee the city and find refuge in an abandoned villa in the Tuscan hills. Here, between moral doubts and the tasks needed to survive, they kill time by telling each other stories until they will decide to return. The stories are varied - tragic, bizarre, funny or erotic - but common and central to all of them is the female presence.

The little witch is only 127 years old – too young for the annual coven of witches. Although she is not yet old enough to be a real witch she wants to become a really good one. This decision causes trouble inside her magic world.

Lukas, a young schizophrenic man, has to deal with a new town, a new relationship, and the paranoia in his head.

A devout community suffering from a plague is torn apart by a beautiful young woman and the forces of witchcraft, black magic, and possession.

A young girl is abducted by a man, who claims that a cult is hunting her. His goal is to protect her until sunrise but while restrained, the young girl falls deathly ill. While her friends and family search for her, the source of her illness becomes more and more apparent. She’s not sick…she’s changing.

Oona, a recent graduate in anthropology, has returned to her dead mother’s seaside cottage in southern England to prepare it for sale. Her arrival disturbs Mani, a wary vagrant who has been squatting on the property.

A Young soldier returning from Iraq goes on a high mountain adventure in a desolate place in Europe to forget his past, he will lear truth in a mysterious local legend discovering that reality can be sicker than nightmares.

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.

Five people travelling by camper crash into a tree. When they recover, the road they were driving on has been replaced by an impenetrable forest and a wooden house.

A group of friends stranded near a desolate cornfield find shelter in an old farmhouse, though they soon discover the dwelling is the center of a supernatural ritual.

An Icelandic couple live with their herd of sheep on a beautiful but remote farm. When they discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own. This unexpected development and the prospects of a new family brings them much joy before ultimately destroying them.

While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

A dicey murder investigation. A fuming best friend. A chaotic living situation. Village police officer Franz Eberhofer has a lot on his plate right now.

Norway, 1942, during World War II. After being separated from her family, Esther, a young Jewish girl from Trondheim, arrives at an isolated farm where she must assume a new identity in order to survive the Nazi persecution.

In a time of starvation, a survivalist lives off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest. When two women seeking food and shelter discover his farm, he finds his existence threatened.

As a deadly virus ravages the world, Dr. Martin Lowery embarks on a mission to reach test site ATU327A, a research hub deep in the Arboreal Forest. The arduous journey, guided by park scout Alma, is set back by a nighttime attack that leaves the two bruised and shoeless. When they run into Zach, a man living off the grid, they gratefully accept his help. Zach’s intentions aren’t exactly what they seem, however, and a path out of the forest and into safety quickly fades as the line between myth and science blurs.

Puglia, southern Italy, around 1400. A convent is invaded by the Tarantula cult, whose fanatical and crazed members desecrate the sacred place by committing obscene and bloody acts.

Set in a sleepy Austrian mountain village, ex-detective Simon Brenner has grown weary of his job repossessing cars and embarks on an extended getaway to the countryside. But before long he becomes embroiled in the convoluted world of the locals of a supposedly quiet town.

The narrative unfolds in the 14th Century, when the European nations vie for supremacy within the Holy Roman Empire. The ambitious Austrian Empire, desiring more land, invades neighbouring Switzerland, a serene and pastoral nation. Protagonist William Tell, a formerly peaceful hunter, finds himself forced to take action as his family and homeland come under threat from the oppressive Austrian King and his ruthless warlords.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

The feeble-minded Sven's mother dies and he gets work as a farm-hand at the rich, affluent Höglund's farm. He has to work without pay and sleeps together with the cows. He meets the disabled Anna who is the first one to treat him as an adult. One day he has had enough of Höglund's maltreatment and moves in with Anna's family. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.

On a college trip to remote Northern forests, one of the students - Marina - encounters a burial site of an ancient witch, and is possessed by the spirits of the past. Now Marina and her companions must take part in the millennia old fight between good and evil, involving lake witches, sorcerers, and ancient forces from the myths.

The body of a young woman is discovered near a farm. The judge, Larcher is in charge and thinks that the farmers have something to do with the murder.

In the 19th century, a young widow named Eva manages a remote winter fishing outpost in an Arctic bay, which she inherited after her husband, Magnus, was shipwrecked. The nearest settlement is three days' march away and inaccessible due to deep snow on the mountain trails. The outpost faces a harsh and brutal winter with rapidly dwindling supplies. Eva and her crew are already living on bait as their fishing catch declines. One morning on the beach, they witness a Basque whaling ship sinking far out near the cliffs known as "the Teeth," which rise steeply from the sea. Eva now faces an impossible decision, as any attempt to rescue the survivors risks depleting the last supplies for her and her men even faster.

A 14-year-old orphan named Krabat flees the horrors of the 30 Years War by becoming an apprentice to an ominous master of a mysterious mill. Krabat is not only taught the craft of milling, but is also instructed in the sinister world of the darker arts. When the life of his friend and protector is threatened, Krabat must struggle to free himself from an evil sorcerer's control in a gripping fight for freedom, friendship and love.

The Alps, late 19th century. Greider, a mysterious lone rider who claims to be a photographer, arrives at an isolated lumber village, despotically ruled by a family clan, asking for winter accommodation.

Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
