"The Witch": A (Theological) Movie Review

First off, full disclosure: I love horror movies. No, no, not slasher films with nothing but blood, guts, and profanity. Yuck. Those are just gross. I also simply don’t find them scary at all. I suppose that might have something to do with my conviction that the body is impermanent and will break down and decay anyway, while the soul is immortal and can’t be touched. No matter how much pain Leatherface might inflict with that ubiquitous chainsaw, it’s not going to last forever. It’s going to stop at some point, and the victim’s soul will move on. Yawn.

So it’s the supernatural horror that I go for, because that’s the stuff that’s really terrifying. You might be in perfect health, but if that Japanese ghost follows you home and sucks your soul into its own tormented shadow world…well, that’s something that’s going to last for quite some time. Yikes.

The new indie release The Witch falls decisively into the latter category. In fact, I can say without exaggeration that it’s one of the top most frightening movies I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen quite a lot.

The film begins in a religious meeting house of indeterminate denomination. Given the clothing and dialect, I was immediately put in mind of the Puritan settlements of 17th-century New England, and most particularly of the Salem witchcraft hysteria and trials. But the opening scene of The Witch isn’t a trial for suspected witchcraft: a family stands before the tribunal of religious authorities on apparent charges of pridefully opposing the local church. Just how this opposition was manifested is not disclosed to the viewer; as the film progresses, it seems odd that this praying, Bible-quoting, Jesus-believing family had ever stood in any kind of opposition to their faith community. They seem conventional enough, especially in their exposition of Calvinist theology. At one point, the father, Will (Ralph Ineson), has a conversation with his young son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) about salvation, heaven, and hell. Will, in a kindly, compassionate, loving tone, explains to Caleb that only God knows who will end up in heaven and who is slated for hell. While Will attempts to temper this by urging his son to trust in God, this exquisite exposition of double predestination establishes a foundation – and furnishes an explanation – for everything the family will suffer, and for the ultimate outcome of the film.

For their theological crimes, whatever they may be, the family is banished from the settlement and strikes out on their own. Rather than seeking out another village, they homestead in a remote area, hard by the edge of a thick forest. The reality of the early settlers’ lives is well-told by the movie’s inclusion of a blight on the family’s small crop of corn. In the midst of this threat to their livelihood, a personal tragedy adds grief to the family’s hardship. It truly appears that they are cursed – especially when a dropped hen’s egg breaks open to reveal a bloody, nearly-formed chick. One of the younger children, Mercy (Ellie Grainger), initiates the suspicion of a witch, living in the nearby woods, who is to blame for all the mysterious and tragic events plaguing the family.

Around these bizarre happenings swirls an interpersonal maelstrom of deceit, blame, and hopelessness that leads the family into a state of total deterioration. No one knows what or whom to believe, including the movie’s audience. Is the cause of this family’s decay truly due to satanic forces, or is it cabin fever, the paranoia of 17th-century religiosity, and the psychological trauma of being separated from their support system and facing imminent death by starvation or disease? Despite a serious illness striking Caleb, the loss of the crops just before winter, the bolting of the family’s only horse, and the brokenhearted pleas of his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), Will stubbornly refuses to return to the village for help, sealing his and his family’s fate.

Katherine is the subtle theological voice in the film. When things begin spiraling into darkness, she refers to Christ’s temptation in the wilderness – just as He had gone into the desert to be tested by Satan, so Katherine and her family had been cast out into the wild and appear to be also afflicted by the Evil One. When the situation becomes desperate, Katherine admits that she no longer finds love in her heart for Christ. This, for me, was the entire crux of the film. Riddled with sinful pride, Will condemns himself and everyone he loves to separation from the church. While the church in The Witch is not Catholic, there are lessons to be applied to the Catholic Church or, indeed, to any faith tradition and community. When the faithful place themselves above the church and intentionally become a law unto themselves, they invite spiritual darkness into their lives and into the lives of their loved ones. At the same time, the church itself is not without blame: when the church shows no mercy and abandons those baptized into the Name of Christ, the church itself throws open the door to the demonic. It condemns those who belong to Christ to die a slow spiritual death.

One can’t blame Katherine for the deadening of her heart toward God. In the Calvinist thought so well explained by Will to Caleb, no one in this society has any way of knowing whether God loves them. No one is assured of God’s mercy in the Calvinist system of double predestination, in which God selects some for heaven, some for hell, with no rhyme or reason and without letting His followers in on the process. Not only does the church show no mercy to Will and Katherine and their children, but the faithful themselves have no sense of God’s mercy and no way of accessing it, since they have been steeped since birth in a worldview that has them suspended over the flames of hell by a fragile thread that God can sever at any random moment. (See Rev. Jonathan Edwards’ infamous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” for this very metaphor.) Who can trust such a god? No matter how much the family prays, fasts, and seeks God’s will, He remains silent throughout the film. But who can expect an answer to prayer from a deity whose favor is so arbitrary and whose love is never guaranteed?

The Witch does a beautiful job of showing precisely how Satan operates in those who belong to Christ: in addition to sinful pride and separation from the Body of Christ, the church, there is silence, deception, and blame within the family that causes the family members to turn on one another until the breakdown is complete. Satan takes advantage of the merciless theology of Puritanism that causes a lack of security in God’s love; the Evil One knows the family has no recourse in the face of the tragedies that visit them. It is only when our Lord had already fasted for forty days and was hungry that “the tempter approached” (Matthew 4:3, NABRE), and it is the same with us: it is at our lowest point, when we are mentally and spiritually “done,” that Satan comes a-calling. Demons take advantage of weakened states; they love to kick us when we’re down. The difference lies in trust in God’s love. Perhaps if the Puritans hadn’t forbidden even the simplest crosses in their midst for fear of breaking the first Commandment (the second, in the Protestant order), they could have had before their eyes every moment the proof of God’s solidarity with them in their suffering; evidence that God loved them and bestowed His grace and love freely – not capriciously.

Toward the end of the film, one of the family members is faced with a stark choice. God remained silent throughout the film; but now, at the moment of decision, Satan’s voice is the one we hear. In another parallel to our Lord’s testing in the wilderness, Satan offers material delights to the character he has chosen, reminding us that the world can be ours if we will only bow down and worship him. Without the church and without a firm knowledge of God’s love, the character hesitates; but the devil offers an assurance: “I will guide thy hand.” This was the most chilling moment in the entire film, and one that I can’t get out of my head. Satan offers to help, when God had (apparently) offered nothing but a dreadful silence. What a guy. What a prince.

I won’t give away the ending, but something about it has to be said – specifically, that the grand finale is quite open to interpretation. The Satanic Temple called the film “a transformative Satanic experience;” and I can see why Satanists might come away with that result. The end of the film can look like freedom, a rightful release from the constraints of a Christian system that imposes the slavery of conformity and obedience on the human mind, enforcing a state of repression and deprivation contrary to human nature, which Satanists believe should remain unfettered to follow whatever lusts present themselves. However, given the overall context of the film, the final scene can also look an awful lot like license, which is very different than freedom. That our culture has lost the ability to distinguish between the two only makes the conclusion of The Witch all the more terrifying.

This is a film that doesn’t stick with you as much as it sticks to you. This might sound strange, but The Witch may just be a better Lenten movie experience than Risen (which I admittedly have not yet seen, but plan to), because if this horror flick doesn’t get you thinking – and praying – I’ll eat my Rosary.