5 Nature-Filled Horror Films That Are Perfect for Spring

We’ll start our nature tour on a run-down farm in New England, where a couple decides to flee their city life and live off the land. The only problem? She’s fresh out of a mental institution, and he’s been a musician with an orchestra for years, so they have no idea what they’re doing. 

However, this is a horror movie, so rest assured that their time on the farm and at the nearby lake will be anything but productive or relaxing. When they arrive at their new property, there’s a mysterious woman already living there, and they do what anyone would: invite her to stick around for a while. 

From there, we get some of the most surreal horror antics of the 1970s. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death benefits from its immensely strange vibes and a setting that makes the bucolic seem downright diabolical. 

With a plot that doesn’t always try to be logical and a wholly low-budget aesthetic, this is certainly not a movie for everyone, but if you like a whole lot of eeriness in your horror, then this one is for you. 

For our next stop on this nature-based tour, let’s head across America and out to the desert for one of the weirdest horror movies you’ve probably never seen. In the middle of the Arizona desert (technically, the Kenyan desert since that’s where it was actually filmed), a group of ants suddenly builds a series of elaborate towers.

Nobody knows how or why, but a couple of scientists decide to investigate. Spoiler: it doesn’t go well for them. This movie is so bizarre that it was even featured on one of the earliest episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

Without or without the snarky robots, Phase IV is absolutely worth your time, especially if you like nature horror that’s as psychedelic as it is strange. Bonus points for all the trippy sequences featuring almost operatically beautiful close-ups of ants. 

Once you finish up with the ant invasion in the middle of the desert, let’s take a jaunt up the California coast, where there’s an avian disaster brewing in the quaint town of Bodega Bay. 

The fashionable yet slightly unhinged Melanie Daniels (played to perfection by Tippi Hedren) decides on a whim to follow handsome stranger Mitch Brenner to his family’s private island north of San Francisco. Little do they know that all the birds in the area have been quietly plotting the world’s demise. 

A bona fide classic from director Alfred Hitchcock, you’ve probably already seen The Birds (perhaps even many times over), but it definitely benefits from rewatching. 

A stylish and slick 1960s horror film, The Birds was a blast when it was released, and it’s still a blast now, so give it another viewing this spring if you want a heavy dose of nature gone very, very wrong. 

By now, you’re probably exhausted from all those bird attacks (not to mention the fact that you hadn’t quite recovered from the previous ant attacks). If you’re still in the mood to take in the sights, then consider continuing your California foray by traveling up the coast to Antioch Bay, a lovely oceanside town. 

Walk along the beach where you might find a wooden plank from the shipwreck of the Elizabeth Dane, a boat that sailed in 1880 carrying a group of the sick, desperate to establish a leper colony. Unfortunately, the locals had other plans. It’s hard to pick a favorite John Carpenter film, but you can’t go wrong if you choose The Fog. 

It’s an unsettling masterpiece and one that has a ton of great performances, especially from its leading ladies, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, Janet Leigh, and Adrienne Barbeau. And the men aren’t slouches either: Tom Atkins and Hal Holbrook are pretty fabulous too.  

A word of warning, though: during your sojourn in Antonio Bay, be sure to stay out of the eponymous fog. And don’t forget to tune into Stevie Wayne’s radio station; we hear she plays some very smooth tunes. 

For our final stop on this nature horror excursion, let’s journey across the Atlantic Ocean and land in a remote French village where a terrible drought is plaguing the crops. 

Fortunately for the locals, the ancestral family that owns the vineyards has a strange supernatural pact, ensuring “life-giving clouds” will show up right on time to save the harvest. 

Truly, though, if you haven’t seen Eye of the Devil, that description in no way fully does it justice. A prototype of The Wicker Man, a full seven years before that film existed, Eye of the Devil is one of the greatest folk horror movies you’ve probably never seen. 

Also, worth mentioning: the luminous Sharon Tate has a costarring role as the witchy Odile, stealing the show every time she’s on-screen. An incredible cast and an unnerving pastoral setting: what more could a horror fan want out of your nature-filled spring weekend? 

Still from Universal Pictures