The Most “Disorienting” Horror Movie You’ve Never Seen is Streaming Now on HBO Max
What if I told you Lana Del Rey used a vocal sample from one of the strangest, most unnerving horror movies in the intro to her song, “13 Beaches”? And that Drake’s music video for “Knife Talk” opens with a scene from that same movie? Or that in a 1989 review, Roger Ebert suggested it could have been a possible source of inspiration for David Lynch and George Romero?
Now, what if I said it’s streaming right now on HBO Max?
The movie is Carnival of Souls (1962), a low-budget fever dream that many Letterboxd users describe as “disorienting,” “eerie,” and downright “nightmarish.”
Directed by Herk Harvey, Carnival of Souls tells the story of Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), an anxious young woman who is the sole survivor of a devastating car accident. Mary, still obviously rattled but eager for a fresh start, accepts a job as an organist in a church in Salt Lake City. She has no connection to the church. In fact, she has no connection to anyone. She just “plays for pay”—wherever the job is, she will follow. And because she has “no desire for the close company of other people,” it makes it easier to start over.
But when she arrives, she begins seeing visions of a ghoulish, pale-faced man (played by Harvey himself) and slowly becomes obsessed with the deserted carnival on the edge of town. It seems to be calling her. Perhaps it’ll help her remember what happened the day of the accident. Perhaps it’ll put an end to all these visions of the man. Or perhaps there’s something else waiting for her out there, hidden in one of the funhouses or in the abandoned dance hall….
Carnival of Souls is an essential part of my Summerween watchlist. Sure, it’s not a sleazy summer camp slasher or deep-sea creature feature, but it captures the very specific sense of unease and melancholy that seeps in during the last few days of August. The image of Mary climbing out of the river in a floral printed sundress caked in mud, the harsh lighting making her hair appear sun-bleached instead of just blonde, the sound of an invisible bird chirping away in a tree, the deserted, crumbling carnival on an empty white beach—it all sounds like a Lynchian small-town nightmare to me.
But if you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t say anything more. All I’ll say is, there’s a reason Carnival of Souls keeps resurfacing in the work of some of our most influential artists. And now is the perfect time to find out.
Categorized: News
