Time Of The Season: 10 Wild Horror Movies For Spring | ScreenRant – Screen Rant

Spring is the season to indulge in long walks, plant gardens, and watch flowers bloom. There's a special brand of horror movie that teems with springtime vibes, full of lush landscapes, fever dreams, and tense moments of lust. While some of these films revel in nature, others subvert its influence.

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All of the films on this list attest to the fact that while the natural world humans inhabit is overwhelmingly beautiful, so many of its processes are beyond comprehension. Some of these films also prove that defining human emotions like love, which seem to thrive in the scents of spring, can sometimes be more destructive than fruitful.

A Field in England takes place during the 17th Century's English Civil War. This hallucinatory and visceral feature from Ben Wheatley follows a group of men, both rogue soldiers and alchemists, as they try to escape the carnage of war.

Humanity turns against nature here courtesy of endless combat, and nature retaliates by turning against humanity. Shot in black-and-white, the movie takes a psychedelic turn when the crew consumes hallucinatory mushrooms and then fight each other in a massive war-torn field over buried treasure. Cinematographer Laurie Rose manages to make the pastoral English countryside terrifying with his spastic style.

A graphic French slasher film, High Tension possesses a complicated queer love story at its core, one overlooked because of the movie's butchery. Best friends Alex and Marie visit Alex's family for the weekend, and they are followed by a brutal serial killer who invades the house and starts taking Alex's family members out one by one.

When the young women are kidnapped by the killer and placed in the back of his van, what seems like a fight-for-your-life feature abruptly changes when the romantic dynamic between Alex and Marie, as well as Marie's past, is exposed. As the film's climax progresses, the two women share a bloody, violent kiss that makes even the most toxic relationship seem perfect.

A grisly South Korean horror film set in a stunning and resplendent fishing resort, The Isle documents the problematic relationship between the mute owner of the resort and a new visitor: a man running from the law. The woman, Hee-jin, and the man, Hyun-shik, are both self-destructive and disturbed, which draws them to each other.

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Hee-jin runs a brothel at the resort, often servicing clients herself. The closer she becomes with Hyun-shik, the more the pair engage in savage acts against themselves and others. The contrast between their barbarism and the lavish green world of water they inhabit adds an extra layer of tension to an already taut film.

French auteur Claire Denis is responsible for this controversial erotic thriller that makes a horror movie out of misunderstood feminine sexuality. When an American couple goes to Paris, supposedly for their honeymoon, it soon becomes obvious the husband Shane, played by Vincent Gallo, is there to track down a French woman who is the object of his obsession.

The woman, Cor, is locked in her home by her husband because she has a propensity, like a praying mantis, to initiate encounters with random men and then consume them, literally. The film's cannibalism is a metaphor for stifled female desire, and the males in the movie try their best to control and own it.

An underrated period movie that takes place in 18th century France, Perfume stars Ben Whishaw and Dustin Hoffman as a pair of perfumers. Whishaw plays Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, whose heightened sense of smell gives him a special, yet fanatical, desire to harness every pleasant scent into his work.

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A product of the dirty and rank streets of Paris, Grenouille comes to believe he must sweeten the city's odiferous reputation by creating the perfect, lasting perfume. His quest turns deadly when he begins killing young women and extracting their alluring natural aromas through a method called enfleurage. The film reaches a dream-like finale when Grenouille, about to executed for his crimes, releases his olfactory masterpiece onto the crowd.

The love story at the heart of this feature from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead is, while grotesque at times, rather romantic. Lou Taylor Pucci stars as Evan, an American who travels to Italy in order to escape his troubled life back home. Off the bat, he meets a gorgeous local named Louise, who seduces him with her whimsical musings and adventurous spirit.

As the nature of their relationship intensifies, Evan notices some troubling red flags, yet he is too wrapped up in the opulence of their affair to acknowledge the truth about Louise's supernatural nature until it's too late. Set against the rustic and ancient Italian countrywide close to the Mediterranean Sea, Springis a tale of loss, redemption, and the sort of change that only comes with the equinox.

Japanese directors are behind some of the most beautiful and horrifying ghost stories in cinematic history, and Japanese horror films are replete with desire, fervor, and human jealously. Empire of Passion, directed by Nagisa shima, is Japanese erotic horror at its best.

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Set in Edo Japan, the story concentrates on a love triangle between a married couple and a young man. Toyoji is having an affair with the older Seki, and they decide to murder Seki's husband and drop his body into a well. For three years, they share an intense romance, but Toyoji grows distant from Seki as villagers start to gossip about what happened to her husband. Things take a turn when the ghost of Seki's husband starts haunting her.

Some fans interpret Lars Von Trier's psychosexual horror film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as a retelling of the Bible's origin story. The actors play a married couple who retreat to their cabin in the woods after the tragic death of their young son. As the days pass, Dafoe's character is tormented by terrible images of nature while Gainsbourg's character grows hostile and violent.

The wooded expanse the pair inhabits in the movie is rotten, full of sickly animals and irregular processes. This tainted state of nature highlights the couple's increasingly troubled personal relationship, which reaches a shocking point of no return.

An outlier for director Paul Schader, this horror film is loosely based upon the 1942 movie of the same name. Stylish and sexy, Cat People's fantastical premise is imbued with just enough mood and atmosphere to make it entertaining. It doesn't hurt that the film is set in New Orleans, full of ancient oak trees and muggy bayous.

The movie stars Malcolm McDowell and Nastassja Kinski as reunited siblings with an interesting heritage: they are part-panther. Kinski's character Irena doesn't want to accept this part of herself, yet her instincts cannot be suppressed, and awakening the beast within serves as a metaphor for her burgeoning sexual hunger. John Heard plays a zoologist who engages in a heated romance with Irena.

The late-spring May Day traditions turn deadly in this quirky cult classic about an island full of Celtic pagans who target a virginal, middle-aged Christian police sergeant for a ritualistic sacrifice designed to ensure plentiful harvests in the future.

Residents of Summerisle construct a fake story about a missing girl to lure Neil Howie onto their island. Genre icon Christopher Lee plays the elusive Lord Summerisle, who encourages his followers to engage in dance, fornication, and playful ceremonies in preparation for the big day. As Howie becomes more and more confused about what's going on, the islanders finally turn on him while maintaining an air of springtime celebration.

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Megan is a public librarian by trade obsessed with the intersections between art, culture, and society. She's a nerd for horror, obscure memes, weird history, graphic novels, and binge-worthy science fiction series.

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Time Of The Season: 10 Wild Horror Movies For Spring | ScreenRant - Screen Rant

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero