In True Detective’s first season, Louisiana gets turned into a boundless world. There are desolate villages below sea level and the state’s humidity makes sweaty large splotches on the backs of detectives Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) who wrestle with personal demons on and off the job. Then there are the weird horror elements. The men find themselves investigating a series of macabre murders, an investigation that spans years for what turns into an odyssey. Within it, there’s a killer who worships an entity known as the Yellow King, a vile conspiracy of human sacrifices, and a wealthy, powerful family doing their best to keep skeletons in the closet.

The following titles explore what this debut season aimed at. The Empty Man pushes an ex-cop into exploring disappearances that connect to a cult. The surreal Blue Velvet and Under the Silver Lake expose debauchery and crime, one in a small town, the other in the City of Angels. In Memories of Murder (2003), the police are volatile and baffled when South Korea experiences the country’s first known serial killer. These movies might just fill in the diabolical hole left by Rust and Marty. Plus, the fourth season of True Detective is another chilly descent into darkness, while giving much love to the debut season that started it all.

Blue Velvet (1986)

Director: David Lynch

Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) heads back home when his father suffers a heart attack. Returning to the cozy community of Lumberton, Jeffrey meets up with the sweet Sandy (Laura Dern) and the two effortlessly grow close, but love is not so much on the young man’s mind. Finding a severed ear, Jeffrey becomes obsessed with knowing how it possibly got there. The thought that it might lead somewhere dangerous didn’t cross Jeffrey’s mind, despite the fact it was a severed ear. The pull of the mystery has a grip on him, good and tight.

It takes him to the enchanting, tormented Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) and the gas-huffing, embodiment of male rage, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). Director David Lynch’s opening says all you need to know about the movie’s town. Underneath the baby blue sky, red roses, and white picket fence, is a subterranean world of bugs. A nice touch on this list is Frank’s involvement with a corrupt detective known as, “the Yellow Man.” It may not be the Yellow King, but the cesspool of violent men in Lumberton makes human monsters all the more terrifying.

Seven (1995)

Director: David FIncher

Image Via New Line Cinema

In David Fincher‘s modern crime classic, Seven, detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) are new partners who arrive at the scene of a grisly murder. Somerset, planning to retire within the week, attempts to get himself off the case, a decision that is denied. The quiet, older detective is forced to work with his short-tempered, younger partner. That’s when the killer’s pattern forms; murders that are committed in the style of the Seven Deadly Sins. The detectives are on a countdown with a sadistic mastermind who has methodically planned out this week of horror. Each body they find is more creatively harmed than the next.

Set in a rainy and crime-ridden city, there is no name given to the location. It could be any confining and claustrophobic metropolis with dingy apartments, shadowy alleyways, and noisy traffic. Somerset and Mills aren’t nearly at each other’s throats like Rust and Marty, they find a way to make their partnership successful, establishing mutual respect that eventually evolves into a friendship. However, their differences end up playing a big part in what ends up being a grim finale.

Thesis (1996)

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

Image Via Universal Pictures

Ángela (Ana Torrent) prepares to start a thesis project at a university in Madrid. Fascinated by violence, she centers her thesis around it and wants to do more research. She asks for help from a professor in finding more extreme content within the university’s library. The obsession leads her to talk to Chema (Fele Martínez), a fellow student, as Ángela knows that he collects violent content. It’s how the two come upon an authentic snuff film, something that doesn’t unnerve them as much as it should.

While Chema may be crude and intense, the two work together to learn more about the crime they have on a VHS tape. It connects back to the university they both attend. There are no female victims posed with a crown of thorns and antlers, but there are still plenty of bodies. From an early scene involving a death at a train station, Ángela craves to see all things morbid and, while there is a killer, what the movie wants to say is more damning — the media, from movies to news, are obsessed with violence, and mostly when it targets women.

Memories of Murder (2003)

Image via CJ Entertainment

Loosely based on South Korea’s first serial killings, the bodies of two women are found at the edge of a small town. Local detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho), overwhelmed due to a lack of experience, botches the crime. His method is to have a partner beat a confession out of their prime suspect. Of course, it’s not the right guy. A detective from Seoul, Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), arrives to offer much-needed professionalism and assistance. They bicker right away, disagreeing about their very different ways of working, but they desperately need to see eye to eye, as there are many odds stacked against them.

The country’s lack of DNA analysis technology means the detectives are forced to wait for a possible result by shipping evidence to the United States. Yet, they do figure out key triggers and circumstances the killer favors for an attack. Director Bong Joon Ho uses cloudy days to accentuate the mood. When bad weather is thought to be an active time for the killer to strike, each rain sequence brims with tension, the environment ends up as deadly as the unknown assailant. There is absurd comedy known to the director’s style to ease the somber tone, if only temporarily.

Kill List (2011)

Director: Ben Wheatley

Image Via Optimum Releasing

Jay (Neil Maskell) is an ex-soldier, finding work as a hitman, but some time has passed since a job went badly, and now Jay has a new opportunity. All he has to do is complete three kills. Partnered with long-time friend, Gal (Michael Smiley), it isn’t long before the men understand everything is not what it seems. It follows them home as additional stakes are raised by unknown employers. The movie plays with expectations, starting as a slow burn of a man trying hard to hold onto his mental health until it becomes clear that the three assigned victims are connected. That’s when Jay gets dropped into an abyss he won’t be able to escape.

There is darkness everywhere, and not just in nighttime scenes where the men find themselves trapped in a horrifying danger. Jay is traumatized from a mysterious past which only makes him push harder against the forces plotting against him. If he can find retribution, maybe he will get better. But it’s an error on his part to assume he understands what is happening. Unlike a certain pair of Louisiana lawmen, Jay is the perpetrator of a ritualistic killing with his three targets. He’s a puppet, whose strings are sliced only at the right moment.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Director: David Fincher

In David Fincher’s take on the Swedish novel, there is a cold precision that matches the environment. After a professional fallout, journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) takes a small assignment that brings him to a secluded island. There, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) lives along with other members of the estranged wealthy Vanger family. The old patriarch has worked tirelessly over the decades to solve his young niece’s disappearance, requesting Blomkvist’s fresh pair of eyes. Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a hacker, inevitably gets pulled in to help Blomkvist solve what turns out to be a series of unsolved crimes Henrik’s niece had an interest in.

Golden-tinged flashbacks bring the cold case to life, contrasting the harsh blues of a snowy present day. The men in this world are violent and oppressive, and against Blomkvist’s more timid manner, Lisbeth matches the ruthlessness with her own volatile actions. The soundtrack, composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, dials up the hostility through industrial-like sounds. The unsolved murders Blomkvist and Salander dig into are as bizarre as anything related to Carcosa and the Yellow King when they find animals, fire, and biblical verses attached to the victims in one grisly way or another.

Prisoners (2013)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Image via Warner Bros.

Denis Villeneuve‘s Prisoners follows the dark and twisted story of a pair of young girls who go missing, taken on Thanksgiving night. Although a prime suspect is caught, the case is not that simple. Detective Loki (Jacob Gyllenhaal) and father to one of the girls, Keller (Hugh Jackman) are two dedicated men who make it their mission to find the abducted. While Loki throws himself into the case, using the proper and professional ways to solve it, Keller takes it upon himself to not sit and wait. The grieving father hunts down the abductor, or who he believes it to be, finding himself capable of morally corrupt means to seek answers. Messy character flaws make the movie as gray as the early winter setting.

Keller believes he’s doing the right thing in turning to vigilante justice, putting him in conflict with Loki as the detective realizes the father is up to something, which only leads to more danger. There are many prisoners as the title would suggest. Snakes and intricate maze drawings perplex Loki during his investigation. Reveals may not come quickly but plenty are provided. It’s to the movie’s effective benefit that, in the end, there are answers, but it’s still as tragic and painful as the preceding mystery.

Under the Silver Lake (2018)

Director: David Robert Mitchell

Image Via A24

Sam (Andrew Garfield), living an aimless life on the verge of getting evicted, thinks his life has turned around for the better when he spots Sarah (Riley Keough) who captures his attention immediately. Then, by the following day, she’s gone without a trace. Loving conspiracies and hidden messages in pop culture, Sam turns Sarah into a mystery to be solved. He charges ahead, with a sense of direction he hasn’t felt in some time. A bizarre conspiracy unravels, taking Sam through Los Angeles. The movie’s long runtime matches the sprawling conspiracy the protagonist attempts to decipher.

He comes across weird, uncanny individuals and events — there’s a drugged cookie that grants access to a secret performance, a dog killer hiding in the street shadows, a nude woman wearing an owl mask, and an unimaginable threat that all pop culture is in on a grand conspiracy, giving messages to only those in the know. For all the questions, Sam is ignorant of a glaring fact. He’s trying to make everything make sense. There comes a point when that isn’t possible.

The Empty Man (2020)

Director: David Prior

Image via 20th Century Studios

James Lasombra (James Badge Dale) lives in a small Missouri town, an ex-cop grieving the loss of his family. To make life more difficult, he gets himself involved in the search for a neighbor’s missing daughter. What’s left behind is a message from the youth talking about “the Empty Man.” Soon, mysterious deaths occur, appearing as suicides. Lasombra decides to look into it, learning about the eerie urban legend: supposedly, if someone stands on a bridge and blows into a bottle, the titular figure might just hear.

Right away, the opening prologue is unique in how it takes place away from Missouri, set over in the Himalayas where a hike gets postponed due to an injury and a snowstorm. Trapped in a cabin, hikers encounter an entity with deadly results. True Detective concerned itself with being grounded in realism. Carcosa and the Yellow King were used to portray beliefs, not realities. Lasombra is stripped of that safety, losing himself as he gets closer to the supernatural nightmare that is the Empty Man.

the empty man

On the trail of a missing girl, an ex-cop comes across a secretive group attempting to summon a terrifying supernatural entity.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Before Jodie Foster was getting hit by Alaskan snow, she was frozen in place by the piercing gaze of an imprisoned cannibal. It’s a classic among psychological thrillers, a perfect blend of the horror and crime genres that could fool audiences into forgetting they are watching what is essentially a polished and sleek, not-so-bloody, but still vicious slasher movie. Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) might be behind the prison’s glass walls, but he is always in control of those who visit him. And there is not one danger that crosses the path of FBI recruit Clarice Starling (Foster).

Other than the captive doc, there are the leering fellow agents, and the monster that needs to be caught — Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb (Ted Levine). Occult elements are nowhere to be found in The Silence of the Lambs, but there are the creepy tokens Buffalo Bill collects. A head in a jar. The skull-marked moths that flutter around. Fans of the introspective, philosophical dialogue between the True Detective antiheroes, have the intrusive, manipulative words Lecter sends Starling’s way to look into her soul. Each of their interactions turns into claustrophobic sequences, where director Jonathan Demme films it with as much tension as the basement finale.