Spoilers ahead. Don’t read if you don’t want to know.
I had no idea what the The VVitch would be about, but the trailers were creepy and the cinematography was striking, the costumes and the language dead-on for the period. I had only that, and Drew McWeeny’s assertion that the movie feels like something we’re not supposed to be seeing. Having seen it, I couldn’t agree more. But after a lot of positive reviews, this movie seems to be dividing audiences pretty starkly. On the drive home last night, my friend Clayton and I were discussing why that may be. When the lights came on after the screening we attended, the theater was full of people complaining about how stupid they thought it was. And that was not at all my feeling. I don’t think it was Clayton’s either, though I got more out of it than he did.
I think that’s kind of the thing with horror movies. Horror, like comedy, is very subjective. What one person finds funny another finds offensive; one person’s comedic gem is another person’s mind-numbing social experiment. Horror works the same way: what scares one person may not scare another, and so when you make a horror movie you have to make sure that the film functions as a film first, and that whatever you find genuinely terrifying, you have to make sure your film services that. And then you have to accept that no matter what you do, it will not work for everyone.
One of the interesting things about The VVitch is that some of the complaints I’ve read were that it seemed like “some sort of religious movie.” I’ve also read that satanists approve of it. Which is pretty weird, I guess, except that if you believe in God you also believe in the devil, and vice-versa, so a film about a Puritan family in Massachusetts in 1630 being tormented by the devil, and a coven of evil witches, based on actual folk-tales of the era, is going to speak to both sides if it is seriously and artfully made. I wouldn’t call it a religious movie, though. It could be seen as sort of an indictment of religion, in fact, if you were inclined to do so. Personally I tend to view things through the lens of my faith, and this film is no exception. It was, at first, a challenge.
I came out of the movie feeling sort of tainted. I needed to sit up a while and read something entirely unrelated and then say some prayers and read some scripture before bed. And I was glad to be able to go to church this morning. Let me explain. I don’t get scared at horror movies, as a rule. I know how they’re made and most of them don’t touch any of my triggers. The reason I wanted to see The VVitch is because I knew going in that it wasn’t the usual, silly kind of horror movie. As one of the main purposes of any film, or indeed any form of storytelling, is to make you feel something; and since, as I said above, fear is a difficult one to get right… I am always looking for horror films that I will find effective.
But it’s not that I was scared. It’s not an actively scary film, and those never really work for me. I would classify this film as unsettling. This film does something that to me is much darker: you watch a family tear itself apart and feel the presence of evil in their midst growing stronger as the film plays out. It does this without feeling goofy or contrived, and it builds to a dark-as-hell climax. Indeed the ending is a loss; evil wins the day and that’s that. The devil collects. And that’s what got me. Because I’m a Christian: the movie is fiction but the devil is real, and he is my enemy, and a story where he wins is going to be a tough one to swallow. If you don’t believe in God or the devil, you may have a different experience, because while you may be capable of being entertained by a story that uses religious themes or iconography, you probably need the payoff not to hinge exclusively on your feelings on that subject. I guess satanists probably find it a delightful jaunt or something.
I get Clayton’s misgivings about the climax, though the more I think about it the more I see a useful message in the film, as a Christian, as an American, and as a human person. Because I think, thematically, the film is about a lack of compassion. It’s about how a house divided, falls. As Americans we need to be talking about that right now. Christian Americans doubly so. One of the interesting things about the movie is that these Puritans, who spend so much time praying to God, completely fail to realize what’s happening around them. Even when they do begin to suspect witchcraft they all blame one another. Evil is all around them but as a family they do not stand united.
They are part of a society so rigid and repressed that every little human frailty becomes a dire transgression, and they are all so worried about these relatively minor (and wholly human) failings — the white lies, scaring the little sister, the twelve-ish year old boy noticing his teenage sister’s breasts — that they are all afraid to talk to each other about what they are thinking, or feeling. They aren’t a close family even though they are alone in the wilderness. They conceal, they feel shame and place blame. That lack of communication begets a lack of trust. Worse still, they don’t show Christ’s compassion to one another, and they are a family. It’s a catastrophic failure to love one another, with the end result being that they all die, except the teenage girl Thomasin, who only survives by killing her mother in self-defense. Finally when she’s alone in the wilderness with nobody and nothing left; with no real sense of love or of having been loved, the devil himself offers her the chance to “live deliciously.” It was jarring to me at first, but theologically it makes perfect sense.
So why do I think this is an important message right now? Because our nation is so polarized, so divided. We blame each other and shame each other, the right and the left, each side convinced that the other is either stupid or evil, and such a division can only harm us in the end. We’re supposed to be the United States. We’re supposed to celebrate and respect differences — even differences of opinion. We aren’t supposed to fear any group of people based on their religion, their race, the language they speak, or even who they love.
I have also noticed that a lot of atheists I have met are people who have been treated very poorly by people who claimed to be Christian. It may have begun after these folks started identifying as atheists, or it may have helped push them to become atheists in the first place. It pains me because that’s not what we, as Christians, are supposed to be like. We’re not supposed to be judgmental or hateful or fearful. And this is the exact reason why: because all it does is make people our enemies, and worse, sometimes makes them enemies of God, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of our mission. You don’t help people by berating them. You help them by being a friend. You don’t change their mind about Christians by arguing with them. You change it by showing them Christ’s compassion.
I do believe that the devil has agency in the world, and that when we fight amongst ourselves we only give him power. But no matter what you believe, I think we can all agree that fear and distrust are not helpful, and they are certainly not the answer to anything. Love is the answer. Understanding is the answer. Treating each other with kindness and respect, is the answer. Shaming and blaming are bogus. Always have been, no matter what your religion is (or isn’t). All that does is create strife, and invite evil in.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” So, I encourage you to go see The VVitch. And then afterwards, let it be a reminder to push out the jive, and bring in the love.
Let it be a reminder of what happens when we don’t.
