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Viy poster

Movies that feel likeViy (1967)

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.

If you loved Viy, the closest films we have are Kwaidan (1965), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and November (2017). All three share Viy's contemplative and dreamlike feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Poison for the Fairies (1986).

🍅 88% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.1 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Georgi Kropachyovcontemplativedreamlikedreadunsettling
11 of 12 streaming nowNetflix · HBO Max · Amazon Prime Video

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If Viy hit the spot, these will too

Kwaidan poster
Kwaidan
1965 · dir. Masaki Kobayashi
🍅 91%★ 7.9horror · fantasy · dramaMax

Contemplative where it counts, dreamlike underneath

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

The Picture of Dorian Gray poster
The Picture of Dorian Gray
1945 · dir. Albert Lewin
🍅 94%★ 7.5drama · horror · fantasy

Dread-soaked and unsettling in the same breath

The difference: Made in the 1940s, in a different era of the craft

A handsome young man trades his soul so that his portrait ages while he stays eternally young.

November poster
November
2017 · dir. Rainer Sarnet
🍅 93%★ 7.1drama · fantasy · romance

Both are built on the same subject: witch

The difference: Leans harder into romance than Viy does

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.

Poison for the Fairies poster
Poison for the Fairies
1986 · dir. Carlos Enrique Taboada
★ 7.2fantasy · horror

Fantasy with a pulse of dream logic, in both cases

The difference: Takes it somewhere less contemplative than Viy does

In 1965 Mexico City, Flavia, a wealthy yet lonely schoolgirl, befriends Veronica, a young orphan girl who has a fascination with witchcraft. Veronica convinces Flavia that she is a real witch and forces her to be her assistant. The children's games gradually become more serious and Veronica demands more from Flavia.

The Phantom Carriage poster
The Phantom Carriage
1921 · dir. Victor Sjöström
🍅 100%★ 8drama · fantasy · horror

Contemplative drama in both cases

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.

Faust poster
Faust
1926 · dir. F. W. Murnau
🍅 91%★ 8.1fantasy · drama · horror

Both lean on dread more than on horror

Murnau’s epic adaptation of Goethe’s tragedy stands with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis among the supreme achievements of German silent cinema. Gösta Ekman plays the alchemist who, his faith shaken in a time of plague, is offered the gift of healing and eternal youth… in exchange for his soul.

Tumbbad poster
Tumbbad
2018 · dir. Rahi Anil Barve
🍅 87%★ 8.2fantasy · horrorPrime Video

Both keep coming back to the same thing: village

India, 1918. On the outskirts of Tumbbad, a cursed village where it always rains, Vinayak, along with his mother and his brother, care of a mysterious old woman who keeps the secret of an ancestral treasure that Vinayak gets obsessed with.

Tigers Are Not Afraid poster
Tigers Are Not Afraid
2017 · dir. Issa López
🍅 97%★ 6.9fantasy · horrorRent or buy

Fantasy built on unease, twice over

When her mother suddenly disappears with no one to care for her, young Estrella ends up on the street and joins a gang of children, triggering a dangerous and tragic chain of events.

The Sentinel poster
The Sentinel
1977 · dir. Michael Winner
🍅 45%★ 6.3horror · mystery · fantasyNetflix

Common ground: demon

The difference: The scrappier of the two with critics

As a young girl, Alison Parker attempted suicide after being traumatized by her father's sexual exploits. Now an elite fashion model, she moves to a Brooklyn Heights apartment building where she encounters a number of bizarre, eccentric tenants and attempts to uncover the building's sinister secret.

Kill, Baby... Kill! poster
Kill, Baby... Kill!
1966 · dir. Mario Bava
★ 6.8horrorPrime Video

Dread-soaked horror, and it commits to that

A 20th century European village is haunted by the ghost of a murderous little girl.

I Walked with a Zombie poster
I Walked with a Zombie
1943 · dir. Jacques Tourneur
🍅 85%★ 7mystery · horror · drama

Different title, same corner of the shelf

A nurse in the Caribbean turns to voodoo in hopes of curing her patient, a mindless woman whose husband she's fallen in love with.

Onibaba poster
Onibaba
1964 · dir. Kaneto Shindō
🍅 90%★ 7.8horrorMax

The same preoccupation in both: demon

While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman and her daughter-in-law survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war, Hachi. The mother disapproves and, when she can't steal Hachi for herself, tries to scare her daughter-in-law with a mysterious mask from a dead samurai.

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