Many ancient myths and legends are scary enough in concept alone. So what happens when filmmakers use their movie magic to bring them to life? What does a murderous incarnation of Saint Nick look like? How much damage can a colossal Nordic troll do? Let's take a look at the scariest mythology in horror movies.
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00:00 Many ancient myths and legends are scary enough in concept alone.
00:04 So what happens when filmmakers use their movie magic to bring them to life?
00:08 What does a murderous incarnation of Saint Nick look like?
00:11 How much damage can a colossal Nordic troll do?
00:14 Let's take a look at the scariest mythology in horror movies.
00:18 The Wendigo isn't new to cinema.
00:20 See 2001's Wendigo, Dark Was the Night, or even video games like Until Dawn.
00:26 Though it's never been as gloriously realized as it is in Scott Cooper's 2021 film Antlers.
00:32 Keri Russell stars as Julia Meadows, a schoolteacher who, despite grappling with her own latent
00:37 trauma, takes an interest in student Lucas Weaver.
00:40 She suspects that Lucas is being abused by his father, though what she discovers is considerably
00:45 more terrifying than she could have imagined.
00:47 "We found a part of a man in the woods today."
00:50 "Part of a man?"
00:52 "I guess the other half was found in the mine."
00:56 As it turns out, both Lucas' father and brother are Wendigos.
01:00 Cooper goes to great lengths to ground the Wendigo myth in its original form, a cannibalistic
01:05 Native American spirit that jumps from person to person, parentally hungry.
01:09 Gory, gooey, and wearing the fleshy face of its most recent victim, it's nightmare-inducing.
01:16 The Hole in the Ground isn't A24's best work.
01:19 It certainly doesn't hold a flame to Hereditary or The Witch.
01:23 Nonetheless, it's still a legitimately frightening horror movie that captures a spirit of European
01:28 folklore.
01:29 The Hole in the Ground follows Sarah O'Neill, a single mother who moves to the Irish countryside
01:33 with her son, Christopher, in a bid to escape Chris' father.
01:37 There, she and Chris both stumble across a titular hole in the ground.
01:41 After Chris wanders from the house one night, Sarah suspects that what returns may not be
01:46 her son.
01:47 "Where were you?"
01:48 "Chris, where were you?"
01:49 "Here."
01:50 "No, you weren't."
01:51 She's right.
01:52 Chris is now a Changeling.
01:53 A popular legend throughout most of Europe, a Changeling is believed to be a fairy, left
01:54 in place of human children.
01:55 They generally make the swap to cause mischief and mayhem, and, as in Chris' case, sometimes
01:56 arrive with homicidal intentions.
01:57 A clear allegory for the impact that Sarah's abusive ex may have had on Chris' psyche,
01:58 the story of the Changeling is a bit of a mystery.
01:59 "I'm not a Changeling.
02:00 I'm a fairy."
02:01 "I'm not a Changeling.
02:02 I'm a fairy."
02:03 "I'm not a Changeling.
02:04 I'm a fairy."
02:05 "I'm not a Changeling.
02:06 I'm a fairy."
02:07 "I'm not a Changeling.
02:08 I'm a fairy."
02:32 Santa Claus is conventionally depicted as a jolly, happy fellow, but the people behind
02:36 Finnish horror comedy Rare Exports present a very different vision.
02:41 Exceptionally conceived by writer-director Jalmari Hallander, Rare Exports follows Pietari,
02:47 a young boy embroiled in the middle of an excavation of Jollapukki, the Finnish folkloric
02:52 figure responsible for modern-day conceptions of Santa Claus.
02:55 "I can proudly say that we are standing on a sacred grave."
03:04 Unlike jovial Saint Nick, Jollapukki is said to be a monstrous, horned beast, one who whips
03:10 bad children and boils them in a coffin.
03:13 The Rare Exports rendition is little more than an emaciated shell of what he once was,
03:18 though his legion of homicidal elves proves to be a considerable match for everyone involved.
03:24 A bloody good time, Rare Exports is one of the most distinct Christmas horror movies
03:28 ever made, and it has an exceptional monster at its center.
03:33 La Llorona, also known as "The Weeping Woman," is a central figure in Mexican folklore.
03:38 Though early texts identify her as a pre-Hispanic figure, her story involves an indigenous woman
03:44 who drowns her two children in a river after their father abandons her.
03:48 She then drowns herself, but finds herself unable to enter the afterlife, and is doomed
03:53 to roam the riverside in search of her children.
03:55 The myth has been adapted frequently as of late, including into a standalone entry in
03:59 the Conjuring cinematic universe.
04:01 However, the best modern incarnation is found in Jairo Bustamante's Guatemalan horror film
04:07 aptly titled La Llorona.
04:10 Replete with political trauma, the movie involves a Guatemalan dictator and his family, locked
04:15 away in their country home while patriarch and former ruler Enrique Monteverde is on
04:20 trial for genocide.
04:22 As the days move on, several family members report sightings of a weeping woman.
04:26 The scares only arrive in earnest in the film's final few minutes, and those wary of slow-burn
04:32 horror won't find a lot that works here.
04:34 But for those with patience, La Llorona is a tremendously frightening foray into generational
04:39 trauma with a sensational specter at its center.
04:43 2020's Underwater leads us down into one of the deepest places on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
04:49 Kristen Stewart's character, Nora Price, is one of several workers at an underwater drilling
04:54 facility, who are forced to leave after an earthquake threatens the stability of their
04:58 quarters.
04:59 "On a scale from one to ten, how bad's my rig?"
05:04 "Ten."
05:06 In their desperate bid to escape, they discover that something is hunting them, picking them
05:11 off one by one.
05:13 In the third act, these antagonists are revealed to be Cthulhu and the Deep Ones, central figures
05:18 in H.P.
05:19 Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.
05:21 A form of contemporary mythopoeia, myths that originate in a fictional literary universe,
05:26 Cthulhu is no less identifiable than the fairies or banshees of yore.
05:31 Lovecraft's works have had a profound impact on the horror genre, and it speaks to Cthulhu's
05:35 perennial recognition that a mid-tier studio genre feature used him as a central antagonist.
05:41 Underwater, at the end, amounts to Kristen Stewart versus Cthulhu.
05:46 It doesn't get better than that.
05:48 The Hollow is a tense, evocative, genuinely frightening, and criminally underseen creature
05:53 feature rooted in rural folklore.
05:56 Adam Hitchens is a conservationist who moves to a remote Irish village with his wife Claire
06:01 and their young son Finn.
06:02 The locals aren't too happy they've moved in, and as Adam scours the nearby woods for
06:07 fungal samples, he encounters several curious sights, including animal carcasses covered
06:12 in strange substances.
06:14 Soon, the legend of the Hollow is revealed.
06:16 "Belongs to the Hollow."
06:18 "The Hollow?"
06:20 "The good people.
06:23 Fairies, banshees, baby stealers."
06:25 Yep, these creatures of Irish folklore have plans to steal baby Finn.
06:31 No one ever listens to the token lore suppliers in these horror movies, do they?
06:35 Never constrained by the film's low budget, the creatures in The Hollow look excellent,
06:40 and the script wickedly subverts several typical horror movie tropes.
06:44 It's a sensational genre outing with some truly vicious fairies at its center.
06:49 Writer-director Andre Overdahl simply doesn't get enough credit.
06:52 Despite having works like Trollhunter, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and The Autopsy
06:57 of Jane Doe to his name, he is curiously absent from most conversations about contemporary
07:02 horror maestros.
07:03 It's a shame, especially in the case of Trollhunter, one of the most exhilarating and wildly inventive
07:09 found-footage movies from this century.
07:12 Fans from Volta University College seek to film a documentary about Hans, a notorious
07:17 bear poacher.
07:18 However, when they secretly follow him into the woods one night, they discover what he's
07:22 really hunting — trolls.
07:24 In Norse mythology, trolls are described as monstrous beings who dwell in isolated caves,
07:30 forming small family units while being generally hostile to humankind.
07:34 They're often said to be both ugly and colossal.
07:37 The trolls in Overdahl's film are no different.
07:40 They appear in the distance, towering over the characters.
07:43 When they need to, they flip over vehicles and chase down jeeps.
07:47 They're terrifyingly and gorgeously rendered, and the found-footage aspect keeps them frightening
07:52 without ever shattering the illusion.
07:58 Trollhunter is a hoot and a half, a pure adrenaline rush of mythic monsters and blockbuster action.
08:04 We highly recommend it.
08:06 Under the Shadow is another myth-centric horror movie that, unfortunately, never got the credit
08:10 it deserved.
08:11 Like Antlers, it inserts an ancient monster into a deeply sociopolitical text, using a
08:16 distinct cultural context to augment its central menace.
08:20 But Bak Anvari's Persian-language directorial debut follows Shideh, a mother and former
08:25 medical student living in post-revolutionary Tehran.
08:28 Unallowed to continue her studies because of her political affiliations, she stays in
08:33 the city with her daughter, Dorsa.
08:35 Despite the objections of her husband, who has been consigned into military service,
08:39 after new neighbors move in, a missile crashes into the building, and all manner of spooky
08:44 goings-on are reported.
08:46 "Have you heard any strange noises in and around the building lately?"
08:50 Shideh is told the legend of the Djinn, spirits in Islamic mythology that, while sometimes
08:56 benevolent, are often said to be responsible for misfortune and death.
09:00 Anvari uses the myths to maximum effect, delivering searing social commentary on womanhood in
09:05 Tehran while delivering the expected supernatural scares.
09:09 There are several noteworthy jolts, and the ending is all-out Djintastic.
09:14 Under the Shadow is the rare political horror film that delivers both commentary and scares
09:19 in equal measure.
09:22 Writer-director Michael Dougherty's Krampus had a lot to live up to.
09:25 His long-delayed Trick or Treat had since become a cult classic, and with Krampus, audiences
09:30 were eager to see whether lightning might strike twice.
09:33 The cast looked great, with the likes of Tony Collette and Adam Scott leading the charge,
09:38 and early promotional material promised something wickedly dark.
09:42 Upon release, though, expectations were tempered.
09:45 While critics called it good, gory fun, Krampus never really hit as hard as everyone expected
09:49 it would before its release.
09:51 "Max, get the fire extinguisher!"
09:54 That's a shame, because Krampus is an incredibly well-done holiday horror extravaganza.
10:01 The titular monster himself is masterfully realized, a practically rendered behemoth
10:06 with massive tusks and a fur-lined robe, all wrapped in an assemblage of chains and bells.
10:12 That image itself is worth the price of admission alone, though Krampus also delivers an exceptional
10:16 modern take on an ancient myth.
10:19 "And that night, in the darkness of a howling blizzard, I got my wish."
10:27 Krampus, according to Austro-Bavarian folklore, was the anti-Santa Claus, a horned monster
10:33 whose role was to scare misbehaving children during December, whipping them with birch
10:37 rods for their misdeeds.
10:39 Krampus respects his legend, turning Krampus into a genuinely unsettling presence, summoned
10:44 to punish a family that's lost its holiday spirit.
10:47 With a league of monstrous toys and elves in tow, Krampus is uncompromising in its commitment
10:52 to visceral, playful holiday terror.
10:55 We definitely recommend that you add it to your annual stack of holiday flicks.
11:00 Netflix often has a penchant for dropping new movies with little to no fanfare.
11:04 Sometimes these titles take off, securing a place in the top ten for several weeks and
11:08 cementing themselves as movies to remember.
11:11 Other times they evaporate as soon as they premiere.
11:14 The Ritual is one that defied the odds and became one of Netflix's preeminent horror
11:19 hits when it launched on the platform in 2018.
11:22 With strong reviews and a terrifying central foe, it was subversive, unexpected, and defiant
11:28 of expectations.
11:29 A group of four men hike the Kungsleden Trail in northern Sweden to honor a friend who was
11:34 killed in an attempt to thwart a robbery.
11:37 The survivors are wracked with guilt for their failure to intervene, and while it's bad enough
11:41 that the surrounding woods incite hallucinations and ritualistic nightmares, it gets considerably
11:46 worse when they discover a Jötunn has been stalking them.
11:49 This Jötunn is an ancient godlike entity that descended from Loki.
12:00 That's a twist, as mythology says that the Jötunn are actually the Norse gods' early
12:05 ancestors.
12:06 A towering monster with an elk-like body, skeletal head, and human-esque hands, the
12:11 Jötunn is a terrifying foe, one the isolated cultists in The Ritual have been worshipping
12:16 for generations.
12:17 [MUSIC PLAYING]
12:20 (upbeat music)