Satan’s Slaves (2017)
Joko Anwar—writer-director of Impetigore and writer of The Queen of Black Magic—is all over this list for a reason, and it’s fortunate that Shudder has helped make his films so accessible stateside. Like The Queen of Black Magic, Satan’s Slaves is inspired by an earlier Indonesian horror film of the same name—Sisworo Gautama Putra’s 1980 cult classic—but is not a remake. Nor is it quite as gushingly gory as Anwar’s other titles. It’s more of a gothic-occult-Hereditary-ish nightmare, following siblings who dig into their family history when sinisterly spooky things start happening after the death of their mother, a once-renowned singer who’d fallen on hard times. Turns out, well… her past holds some diabolically dark secrets. (See: film’s title.)
