The Shout

The Shout (1978) is a British psychological horror-thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski drops the story onto the empty moors of Devon, where composer Anthony and his wife Rachel keep a quiet, slightly distant marriage going.

A drifter named Crossley invites himself in. He claims he spent eighteen years among Australian Aboriginal people and learned to kill with a single shout. It sounds like a vagrant's tall tale — until he walks the composer out into the dunes and proves it. From there the stranger takes over piece by piece: the bed, the house, Anthony's whole life. Alan Bates plays Crossley with cold menace, John Hurt is the rattled composer and Susannah York his wife, while a young Tim Curry and Jim Broadbent turn up in small roles.

Adapted from a Robert Graves short story, the film took the Grand Prix of the Jury at Cannes. Skolimowski parks you in the gap where you can't tell sorcery from a madman's invention, and he refuses to settle it for you. This one is for viewers who like dread without jump scares — slow, sound-driven, crawling under the skin. Stream The Shout (1978) online on iFILM.