Girly Demonic Movies and Books to Devour After Rachel Harrison's PLAY NICE

Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, I’ve curated a list of my favorite girly demonic horror stories. “Girly demonic” is a subgenre coined by author Rachel Harrison, whose latest release Play Nice explores the way complicated women are often undermined and maligned by the men around them.

Clio Louise Barnes is leaving an influencer event in New York City when her cell phone rings. She’s been ignoring its insistent buzz all night, but waiting for a taxi with a hopeful potential hookup, she finally picks up the call.

It’s bad news: Her mom is dead.

Clio hasn’t spoken to her mom in decades—not since elementary school, when her dad was awarded full custody. Back then, her mother claimed that their suburban house was haunted. Or maybe possessed. She blamed dark forces for the widening cracks in her life. But Clio’s dad insists it was the coffee mugs of wine that caused her mother’s unpredictable outbursts, no matter what she claimed in her memoir, Demon of Edgewood Drive.

Now, Clio and her sisters have inherited a slew of unanswered questions and the infamous house, which her mother unexpectedly kept. Clio embraces the opportunity to flip the house—and hopefully develop viral renovation content she can post on her popular social media accounts. But as she excavates her family’s past, Clio develops a terrifying new understanding of what her mother went through in the house on Edgewood Drive.

This is the story Rachel Harrison explores in her latest novel, Play Nice. I’ve been a fan of Rachel’s since a friend gifted me her Bram Stoker-nominated debut, The Return, way back in 2020. Whether you loved her witches in Cackle or the disturbing family inheritance in Black Sheep, Play Nice features Rachel at her smartest, funniest, and sexiest yet.

If you’d like to hear more about Play Nice, She Wore Black’s Agatha Andrews recently published a wonderful episode in which Rachel opens up about how the toxic misogyny of ‘90s and early 2000s tabloids inspired her novel.

But if you’re already devoured Play Nice and are on the hunt for more stories like it, I’ve gathered a few of my favorites below.

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Paranormal Activity is an obvious but apt starting point for this list. With a tight run time of just under 90 minutes, this lo-fi 2007 film was shot entirely on home video camera.

The story follows a woman named Katie as she moves into her boyfriend Micah’s San Diego home. As Katie settles in, the couple is plagued by odd events that recall unexplained incidents from Katie’s childhood. It seems as though a demon may have become attached to Katie—and Micah is determined to use his new video camera to catch it in the act.

You know that meme where Arthur the PBS aardvark is clenching his fist? I was doing that the entire time I watched this movie. The demon is effectively scary, but Micah’s arrogance was far more disturbing to me. There’s no boundary Katie sets that Micah isn’t willing to stomp over, toting his camera and a dream of cashing in her terror for fifteen minutes of fame. No matter how terrified Katie is or how much she begs him not to antagonize the entity that’s stalking her, Micah refuses to listen at every turn.

By the end, I was actively hoping Katie would somehow manage to team up with the demon just to prove him wrong—which is the exact energy Play Nice captures, albeit under different circumstances.

The Medium is another must-see for anyone who loves twisty, gruesome possession stories. First released in 2021, this Thai horror mockumentary follows a film crew as they investigate a medium in Thailand’s Isan region, where a village maintains a shrine to a local deity named Ba Yan. The medium, Nim, accepted Ba Yan’s possession and serves as a spiritual leader in her community.

When Nim’s niece, Mink, begins to display symptoms of possession, the family prepares to make her Ba Yan’s new host. But as Mink’s behavior becomes increasingly disturbing, Nim questions whether the entity is Ba Yan at all. Who, or what, has been toying with the family all these years?

This movie goes so much harder than I expected. Mink’s sexual promiscuity and regression to a childlike state were unsettling, but there are also scenes of shocking violence. If you’re an animal lover, please proceed with caution! But for me, this intensely character-driven story earned its gory moments.

Just like Clio and her sisters in Play Nice, The Medium centers a relationship between two sisters and how their divergent paths in life have consequences that ripple into later generations. It’s a visually beautiful, moving, and utterly creepy movie that I still think about often.

Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, which I read for the first time recently, will undoubtedly end up on many lists like this one, and for good reason. Tremblay tells a reflexive, post-modern tale of two sisters: One a child, one a teenager; one possibly possessed, one (seemingly) not.

The book features a frame narrative in which the surviving sibling recounts the long-ago events of her older sister’s supposed possession to a journalist, who is writing on the anniversary of the disastrous reality TV show that once captured the family’s ordeal.

Tremblay is an incredibly clever novelist. He plants clues and red herrings. He misdirects and doubles back. He creates spaces in this novel, gaps where the truth should be, and he invites the reader to guess what’s inside them. Tremblay never explicitly defines the line between mental illness, exploitation, and possession, instead leaving the story’s confounding events open to multiple potential interpretations.

Just remember who’s telling the story, and what they have at stake. And notice when goosebumps prickle your skin with sudden cold.

I have a wildcard nonfiction rec I’d be remiss not to mention here: Julia Fox’s 2024 memoir Down the Drain. In it, the New York City party girl, artist, actor, and muse tells her life story, from her childhood in Italy to her parents’ troubled marriage to her cross-country road trips with chosen family in the years leading up to Uncut Gems (obligatory “Jams”).

If you’ve seen tabloid stories about her brief relationship with Kanye West and assumed Fox is shallow, this memoir will make you see her in a much fuller light. Fox writes about addiction, grief, celebrity, and romance with wit and heart in equal measure. She also traces the rise and fall of complicated friendships throughout her life, a theme Harrison returns to throughout her body of work.

I also enjoyed Britney Spears’s memoir, The Woman in Me, which provides heartbreaking insights into the torment Spears was subjected to by her father. Despite the many challenges she’s faced, Spears is also surprisingly funny throughout—particularly when she’s brutally dunking on Justin Timberlake, who absolutely deserves the roasting.

If you’re craving more nonfiction stories about maligned women, You’re Wrong About has an archive full of podcast episodes about Tonya Harding, Princess Diana, and Anna Nicole Smith, among many others.

Finally, to address the flickering lights and sudden cold in the room: Sara Gran’s Come Closer isn’t on my list today. It’s a perfect example of girly demonic, BUT OGs will remember that the first ever issue of Scare Me! covered it in depth. You can read my thoughts on Come Closer here.

Up Next: A Very Special Guest

Next week, I’ll be back on the road for a work trip, so we’ll be joined by a very special guest author! Sophie Desmond (@mssophiedesmond) is a horse girl and fraghead extraordinaire, with encyclopedic pop culture knowledge and immaculate taste. We’ve been best friends since seventh grade and she knows all my secrets.

For the past several weeks, she’s been researching and curating a collection of perfumes that embody some of our favorite horror stories. She’ll include links for the daring and vivid descriptions for all!

After that: Have you seen all the amazing launch photos from NYC’s new (and only!) horror bookstore, The Twisted Spine? I live 3,000 miles away and have terrible FOMO, but last week I managed to hop on an early morning call with co-owners Lauren Komer and Jason Mellow. They shared some fun behind-the-scenes stories, reflections on their unexpected journey into bookselling, and a glimpse of what’s ahead.

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.