Religious Horror: Difference between revisions

[[Satan]] is the [[Big Bad]] in a typical Religious Horror story, although he's rarely shown. He is mediated [[Demonic Possession|through a human vessel]], such as a [[Creepy Child]] or a [[The New Rock and Roll|degenerate rock musician]]. The protagonists are usually innocent people trying to live ordinary lives, not sensing anything wrong until their daughter or sonchild starts speaking in someone else's voice, using [[Black Speech|foul languages she or hethey never studied,]], spewing Finnish pea soup, and/or chanting Satanic praises. Members of the clergy (- [[Christianity Is Catholic|most likely the Catholic variety]]; in this case it is (justified by the fact that the Catholic church, of allis the fewmost thatnotable one to employ exorcism, is the most noted, although it does so very rarely) - intervene eventually, with varying degrees of success. If there are human villains, they're evil [[cult]]ists who facilitate Satan's activity on Earth (or, rarely, the Puritans of Salem, Massachusetts, if the author is less favorable toward organized religion in general). A variation is a woman giving birth to [[The Antichrist|Satan's child.]]. This type of horror is often written just to cash in on the popularity of ''[[The Exorcist]]''.

* Easier for Westerners to get than the ''Higurashi'' example below, its sister series, ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni|Umineko]]'', uses many different motifs from the Bible, including having characters with names related to Biblical characters' and blood runes written near murder sites with passages from the Bible written around them in Hebrew.

* ''[[The Binding of Isaac]]'' is an Indieindie game where the child protagonist struggles to escape his insane Evangelical mother. The disturbing imagery lampoons all the worst parts of [[Fundamentalist]] Christian extremism in a [[Black Comedy]] setting.

* ''[[The Last Faith]]'' is a [[Metroidvania]] game scheduled for 2022 release, with trailers showing a [[Gothic Horror]] setting loaded with Western religious imagery.

* Although [[Values Dissonance|most western viewers (and probably the rest of the non-Japanese audience too)may don'tnot getspot it]], part of the horror of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' for Japanese viewers comes from the Shintô temple with a history of human sacrifice. Shintoism places a high emphasis upon "purity". Shedding- shedding blood in a religious context is anathema to Shinto, as is touching corpses and bodily wastes. Several stories in Shintô exist about villages and shrines that practiced human sacrifice, with the purpose of being moral parables for why this is not a good idea. That Rika's ancestors (beware, really gross) {{spoiler|presided over ritual sacrifices in which the participants ate the intestines of the victims}} makes their religion as much an inversion of Shintô as Satanism is an inversion of Christianity. To Western viewers, it's merely disgusting.; Toto believers in Shintô, it's beyond blasphemy, much like sacrificing a pig on the altar of the old Temple in Jerusalem.

** With the exception of Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, the series feature [[Human Sacrifice]] in order to keep some sort of [[Hell Gate]] sealed up. The sacrifice in ''[[Fatal Frame 2]]''{{'}}s sacrifice is probably the least [[squick]]y of the examples (''Fatal Frame 1'' involves a [[Virgin Sacrifice]] being torn apart by ropes attached to her legs, arms, and neck. ''[[Fatal Frame III: The Tormented]]'' is '''much''' worse.)