Sinister cults and secretive sects have long been a source of fascination, particularly within the genres of horror and the gothic. In the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of social upheaval and dissatisfaction with traditional religious institutions resulted in the proliferation of new religious movements (NRMS) that simultaneously ignited the burgeoning youth culture and sparked a moral panic in more conservative quarters. On screen, new religions and cults were frequently a source of voyeuristic fascination, with 1970s horror films like The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan’s Claw, Race with the Devil, and Devil’s Rain portraying cults, rather sensationally, as loci of moral and sexual transgression. Later representations of new religions, particularly as rendered in 2000s and 2010s films like Midsommar and The Other Lamb, are often more ambivalent, treating cults as sites of violence and horror but also, potentially, of liberation and pleasurable transgression.