Since in some of these the magic is the movie, I can’t really avoid spoilers, so I’m not going to.

I’ve always disliked magic in the D&D sense. You know, where it feels like there’s nothing special about magic. It’s just another weapon, often just more powerful. Sure, there’s more to it than that, but that ‘more’ often happens behind scenes. You basically do the work and just release the thing at the moment, also known as Vancian magic after Jack Vance. Of course, even D&D has moved away from this quite a bit.

But there is a whole world of much more interesting approaches to magic. You know, ones which depict the sacrifices, secrets and just pure work connected to magic. Sometimes it isn’t precise, sometimes it strikes back, sometimes it’s hard to control and so forth. I mean, someone has to study these things to make it work and as we know from real life, not all products, for example, are perfect. So, maybe the spells aren’t perfect either. This is what I enjoy and this is how I would like it to be in RPGs as well. It might not offer much tactical value, but I don’t want RPGs to be about tactics either.

All these movies are (relatively) recent (although I understand that some of my readers weren’t even born when Eyes Wide Shut came out, also some who feel very old when I mention that), but as I was researching and thinking about this, I realized there are older movies with similar ideas, like Omen, Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man, but Omen doesn’t really feel right for this, as the threat is very different (maybe The First Omen or Immaculate could have been placeholders of sorts), I don’t want to talk about movies by someone who is wanted for raping a child and I just don’t remember much about The Wicker Man, so here we are. Now I’ll claim this is a new phenomenon, because I just left out all the older examples.

This isn’t new in that sense, but it has become more common as the filmmakers have started to research their movies more extensively in this regard and magic, as a theme, has sort of grown up.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanley Kubrick)

Not strictly magic, but might as well be. The people in powerful positions gatekeep everyone else by maintaining access to themselves difficult by forming these insular groups where you are easily found out by not knowing the rules. Again, this isn’t strictly magic, but the movie actually has a very similar feel to certain movies that have magic used to gain power and influence. As I understand, the figures in cloaks looking upon people having sex, were actually added to appease censors, but you can see that as part of the magic as well: ritualistic sex with witnesses is a part of some magical traditions.

Kill List (2011, Ben Wheatley)

It’s never fully explained (which is good), but much of the movie is the main character taking part in a ritual he has no understanding or knowledge of for most of the movie. Unknown forces are manipulating the situation to make him participate. Why is all of this happening? Who knows? But considering the amount of people involved and the personal sacrifices some of them are willing to make, one can assume all of this is very important.

A Field in England (2013, Ben Wheatley)

This has very much the feel of an early Modern writer just fantasizing about what magicians might be doing. No naked females, as far as I can remember, but considering that the only credited woman in the movie is voicing the titular field, I am very doubtful there is any nudity here. Still, the magic is nicely elaborate and weird. The most memorable magic moment being “the human divining rod” as it’s been described on Wikipedia.

Starry Eyes (2015, Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer)

This movie is clearly a metaphor for the sacrifices you need to make to make it big in Hollywood. You have to compromise your morals. Now #metoo has changed quite a bit (not enough), but considering that the movement got momentum the year after this movie, this is yet another indicator that all of that was just an open secret.

A Dark Song (2016, Liam Gavin)

The whole movie is just a ritual. We have two character locked up in a house, one being the client who wants this done and another is a low-rate occultist (basically the last person you contact after everyone else has declined). A lot of it is just waiting for things to happen and their work to start take effect. Often the signs are not clear, which causes skepticism and blame, but they persevere.

Hereditary (2018, Ari Aster)

If we look at how long a ritual can take, consider intergenerational. The cult in the movie needs a specific kind of body for Paimon, the demon they want to summon, to inhabit, so they have needed to produce that situation.

Midsommar (2019, Ari Aster)

There’s no specific ritual here, just an event with many of them going on. The realistic part here is that the magic is about fertility, for both people and the land around them. For example, if you look at Finnish folk magic, there’s some healing going on, but mostly it’s just love (meeting someone, deepening ties – although even Christianity has the latter – it’s called a wedding) or fertility.

Bring Her Back (2025, Danny & Michael Philippou)

This is, for me, the most compelling depiction. The bad gal has an old VHS tape she keeps watching. It depicts a resurrection. We learn the details as the movie goes on, but the basics are that you need someone to host a demon, you need the original body and you need a new body. Then you keep the demon possessed person hungry for a long time, so that they evolve the ability to eat anything. After that, they eat a part of the original body, just enough for the soul to fit into the eaten portion, then you kill the new body in the same way the original died and the demon possessed person then regurgitates the soul into the still fresh body. The interesting part is that this isn’t written in an old tome or a parchment. It’s just someone using a cheap handheld camera somewhere in Russia(?) to document this and then the person in Australia is trying to interpret what’s going on from all the noise and the badly planned documenting. Real dark magic practices would probably look pretty much like this. Maybe not VHS these days, but you get the point.

Weapons (2025, Zach Cregger)

For a good reason, this movie is probably the clearest on what you need to do to perform this specific kind of magic, which in this case is voodoo inspired or at least the way voodoo has historically been depicted in media. (No, it doesn’t get racist in this movie, at least I don’t think so, but I should not be the final arbiter on this.) The fact that we learn the steps is important, because the climax of the movie, which is extremely satisfying in a way you hardly ever see, we need to believe the kid can replicate this. We believe it, because we have seen it and understood ourselves. We might not really understand all the tools, but that doesn’t matter.