Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
The Holy Boy sits at the intersection of folk horror and moral dread — a healer who absorbs others' suffering, a community built on that exchange, and an outsider who cannot leave well enough alone. The film asks what it costs to be saved, and whether the rescuer is ever truly clean. It signals a taste for slow-burn dread rooted in ritual and place, stories where the supernatural is a mirror for guilt and complicity, and works that let spiritual imagery curdle into something darker.
The Holy Boy is a 2025 horror film co-written and directed by Paolo Strippoli. The film had its world premiere out of competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on 30 August 2025. It received a theatrical release in Italy on 17 September 2025.
From the Wikipedia article The_Holy_Boy_(film), available under CC BY-SA.
Series
World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman
A boy carries memories and power from a prior existence, making him a singular figure in his community.
Series
The Holy Monsters
A principled young surgeon transfers to a struggling hospital and must hold fast to his own standards.
Series
The Messiah
Childhood shaped by religious fanaticism leaves a man unable to escape its reach even as an adult.
Series
The Seven Heavenly Virtues
Celestial emissaries descend among ordinary people searching for the one destined to be a messianic figure.
Series
Higurashi: When They Cry - NEW
An isolated village with a tranquil surface conceals something deeply wrong beneath its communal rituals.
Series
Evil or Live
Young people trapped in an institution endure suffering imposed on them by those claiming to help.
Book
Edinburgh
A gifted child is exploited by an adult in a position of trust, and carries the wound into adulthood.
Book
The holy war
A cosmic struggle to reclaim a fallen city from a corrupting force frames faith as active warfare.
Book
The sword of the spirits
A triumphant return masks private loss — power gained at the cost of the things that mattered most.
Book
The holy
Ancient shapeshifting entities have always walked alongside humanity, named differently by every age.
Book
The wild boy
A boy raised outside human society resists full assimilation even after being studied and cared for.
Film
Leviticus
Desire itself becomes predatory — a violent entity that weaponises longing to trap its victims.
Film
The Altar Boys
Young people confronting an institution's moral failures and deciding to act where adults refuse to.
Film
The Carpenter's Son
A tight-knit village community fractures under supernatural attack targeting a single vulnerable family.
Film
Holy Ghost
A child's inexplicable rescue reopens buried crimes, blurring the line between the miraculous and the haunting.
Film
The Parenting
An ordinary domestic gathering collides with an ancient malevolent presence lurking inside the house.
Film
The Ritual
Two men of faith must confront their own unresolved pasts while performing a dangerous spiritual ritual.
Fans of its isolated village dread and religious unease will find The Ritual compelling — two priests confront a dangerous exorcism — or The Carpenter's Son, which mixes supernatural horror with a remote community under siege.
Higurashi: When They Cry - NEW captures the same mood perfectly: a new arrival settles into an outwardly peaceful village only to discover the community harbours a deeply disturbing secret tied to a recurring ritual.
The holy deals with ancient, shapeshifting entities — called guardians, tricksters, or demons across different traditions — weaving folk mythology into quiet dread in a way that echoes the film's unsettling spiritual undercurrent.