Magic & Witchcraft
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- DirectorAnna BillerStarsSamantha RobinsonJeffrey Vincent PariseLaura WaddellA modern-day witch uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her, with deadly consequences.If you watch The Love Witch with no knowledge of its production or point of origin, you might assume it’s a lost gem of 1960s or 1970s supernatural filmmaking that’s only recently been recovered, restored and released to the public for niche consumption. This isn’t the case, of course, but nobody would fault your logic. Biller’s style is set in the bygone days of B-movie camp, though unlike similar faux-retro productions, à la 2012’s disingenuously nostalgic The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, there’s unabashed joy to her mimicry that reminds us how much fun the flicks The Love Witch emulates can be in spite of, or maybe because of, their badness. The film’s cheese factor is its single most obvious element next to Biller’s enthusiasm for kitsch and her emphasis on superb production design. Samantha Robinson’s ravishing (but equally deluded) witch in search of “true love” never stops to consider whether she has any idea of what those words truly mean, or what personal freedoms are okay to trample in the process. Unsurprisingly, there’s a horror element present in giving so much magical power to a person with such an infantile grasp of right and wrong—like the little boy in The Twilight Zone’s “It’s a Good Life,” you’d be wise not to upset her. —Andy Crump
- DirectorRobert EggersStarsAnya Taylor-JoyRalph InesonKate DickieA family in 1630s New England is torn apart by the forces of witchcraft, black magic and possession.The Witch: A New England Folktale (sometimes stylized as The VVitch) is a great witchcraft film because it takes the traditional narrative of the genre and turns it around, showing the restrictive Christian faith that creates a life full of societal pressures and guilt for a young girl, and how delivering herself to evil might seem like a good escape to that.
Anya Taylor-Joy achieves a spectacular performance in the lead role, but really everything in The Witch seems calculated and executed to perfection. The cinematography uses shadows like very few recent films, the music is tense and unforgettable, and the whole cast gives everything to their roles… It’s one of the best films released this year, and it absolutely deserves a watch.
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Already, many label the coming-of-age journey of The Witch‘s female protagonist Thomasin as a feminist tale of empowerment. And indeed, Eggers’ story does appear to validate what your feminist history teacher has been saying all these years: fear of female power fueled the Salem witch trials. What killed all those women (and some men) was a patriarchal society that not only thought of women as the weaker gender but also saw their sexuality as literal dark magic. The Witch covers it all, setting Thomasin and her budding bosoms up for slaughter as the natural scapegoat for evil.
But something about the feminist interpretation of the film’s events feels amiss to me. So, when Eggers held a Q&A after a showing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this past Saturday, I decided to ask him about it. Somehow, his answer only made the claims of empowerment even more intriguing.
Before we got to mine in the final moment of the Q&A, however, a man to my left asked the question on everyone’s mind. Would the director and talented, fresh-faced actress Anya Taylor-Joy consider Thomasin’s final resting place in Satan’s blood-soaked embrace a “happy” ending? Taylor-Joy answered: yes, because it was the first choice she really got to make. Yes, because it meant empowerment. Yes, because society left her no other option: if she went back to the plantation, she’d face the same accusations; and she couldn’t very well run a farm on her own with nothing but her dead family’s corpses for fertilizer.
Already, red flags were firing. How can Thomasin’s story be one of female empowerment when, as the final scenes imply, she chooses Satan because she literally has no other choice? If the story had painted her ultimate destiny as a clear decision between the life she lived with her family and dancing naked in the woods around a flame, that would be one thing. But Thomasin is no Carrie (of the Stephen King novel), who, despite ending up worse off in many ways, at least chose to be up there of her own volition.
I found the answer to this discontinuity once Eggers answered my question about what it had been like to write a movie about the fear of female power as a man. I asked the question for no other reason than I was genuinely curious about the challenges and insights that experience might have come with. Men, of course, can and have and will continue to write fascinating stories about female empowerment in horror. But, unarguably, a difference between Brian de Palma’s film adaptation of Carrie (1976) and Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie (2013) exists, for example—and it’s to do with much more than Hollywood’s declining artistic integrity.
To his credit, however, Eggers answered a difficult question with potentially catastrophic backlash with a careful (if somewhat fumbling) kind of honesty. Like many who get asked a sticky question they don’t have a semblance of a script to during press events, he clammed up, at first mumbling some vague PR response about consulting many different types of people with many different perspectives (in, I hate to say it, a somewhat eerie echo of Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women.”) Then he gave the honest answer: an equally awkward declaration of his loving and important relationship to his mom. Finally, Eggers gave the interesting and truest answer: “I didn’t set out to make a feminist empowerment narrative. But I learned that writing a witch story is kind of one and the same.”
The Witch, is a tale of empowerment, that can better be understood as a straightforward case study of the puritan woman’s dilemma. Because if nothing else, The Witch reminds us that, to a group of women who truly believed that eternal hell and divinity were real, inevitable destinations, sometimes your best chance at salvation was to turn to pure evil. While all other arms—including those of the ones you loved—are pushing you into the flames, Satan’s open up and welcome you.
But, really, you didn’t even need to be accused of witchcraft in order to live an inherently lesser and more sinful life in the eyes of the Lord you were supposed to worship blindly. Because, in the Puritan version of Christianity, woman has no true place among God: her faith is inherently less powerful than a man’s. Even though Genesis I (the older version of the ultimate origin story) describes man and woman as being made at the same time and both in the image of God, Genesis II (the Puritan preferred chapter) twists it a little differently. In that version, man is created in the image of God, while Eve, created from Adam’s rib and thus made in his image, is basically a notch above animals in the Eden totem pole. Thus women, Puritan’s believed, were more susceptible to the devil because their souls and bodies were inherently weaker. Simply put, men have a direct line to God. Meanwhile, women’s calls get patched through to a man first, then finally to God if the man vouches for her—but also if she’s unlucky, she could accidentally get transferred to the Satan hotline. - DirectorRichard QuineStarsJames StewartKim NovakJack LemmonA modern-day witch likes her neighbor but despises his fiancée, so she enchants him to love her instead.It’s strange to think that mere months after starring opposite each other in Hitchcock’s masterfully suspenseful Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak were reunited for a romantic comedy about urban witches. Widely considered to be the last time Stewart played a true romantic lead in his career (he was 50 at the time), the film is instead dominated by the icily seductive Novak, playing a Bohemian witch-about-town who decides to muck about in Stewart’s love life, chiefly for petty revenge. Of course she falls for the much-older man along the way, leading to a choice between retaining her witchy powers or giving in to love. The whole thing is played as a chastely “sexy” farce, but it’s simultaneously the type of story you really wouldn’t be able to position as a light comedy today—the “love spells” and repeated threats of magical, forced seduction feel a bit strange to watch in the #MeToo era. Still, along with the previously mentioned I Married a Witch, Bell, Book & Candle managed to lay the groundwork for the “magical domesticity” genre you’d later see in Bewitched and I Dream of Genie. —Jim Vorel
- DirectorHayao MiyazakiStarsChieko BaishôTakuya KimuraTatsuya GashûinWhen an unconfident young woman is cursed with an old body by a spiteful witch, her only chance of breaking the spell lies with a self-indulgent yet insecure young wizard and his companions in his legged, walking castle.Howl’s Moving Castle was the Miyazaki film that almost didn’t happen. Conceived in 2001 amidst the height of Spirited Away’s success, Mamoru Hosoda was originally slated to direct the adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 novel before he and Ghibli had a falling out due to a conflict of creative visions. Miyazaki seized the reins and made the film his own, crafting the source material into a creative vessel through which he could forge his impassioned contempt for the then-ongoing U.S. invasion of Iraq into a parable about a fruitless magical proxy war between two nations in a steampunk fantasy setting. Howl’s is a whimsical if occasionally tepid adventure of a timid young woman who, after being cursed with the body of an old crone by a jealous witch, is rescued by a charismatic wizard who lives in a gigantic walking house. The film’s titular castle is one of Miyazaki’s finest creations, resembling a bow-legged fish armed with stumpy wings and turrets hobbling across the countryside and shuffling debris to and fro. To be sure, though its finale is a bit muted and the abrupt resolution of a love story in the movie’s denouement is a bit too neat and tidy, the film is a quintessential Miyazaki effort nonetheless that’s sure to please both newcomers and enthusiasts who might have somehow not seen it yet. —Toussaint Egan
- DirectorHayao MiyazakiStarsDaveigh ChaseSuzanne PleshetteMiyu IrinoDuring her family's move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches and spirits, and where humans are changed into beasts.What is it about Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away that makes it one of his greatest—if not the greatest—films he has ever made? Perhaps it’s because the film represents the best expression of his most defining themes and concepts to date. The strength and perseverance of a young woman, the rapturous glory of flight, the spiritual struggle of personal and cultural amnesia with Japanese society, the redeeming power of love. Or maybe it has something to do with the crux of the film’s story being so archetypically identifiable, not so much a modern reimagining as it is a spiritual evocation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, a childhood odyssey in a world that feels both familiar and foreign at the same time. Whatever the case, there is nothing quite like watching Spirited Away for the first time. The image of Chihiro, having discovered her parents transformed into pigs, running frantically through the streets as the town surrounding her comes to life as lights flicker into existence and spirits rise up from the earth is nothing short of magical. In the midst of all this—and serving as the prime mover for much of the action and threat—lies Yubaba, the other type of witch (as opposed to Kiki) Miyazaki has portrayed more than once in his movies, and she’s everything a menacing, yet complicated witch should be. —Toussaint Egan and Michael Burgin
- DirectorDario ArgentoStarsJessica HarperStefania CasiniFlavio BucciAn American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.Dario Argento has made a few horror films about witchcraft, but none more lavish and unforgettable than his classic Suspiria. It’s the story of a young American ballet dancer who travels to Germany for a position in a prestigious school, only to discover that the place is actually a front for a coven of witches.
The key here, as always with Argento, is visual. Suspiria is chock full of vibrant pinks and neon-laden compositions for the camera, suggesting that this world is a strange new place for the visitor from across the ocean. Needless to say it makes the unnerving feeling of the film more effective, and while it makes us root for the lead, it rarely vilifies the agents of change that are trying to impress upon her. - DirectorRoman PolanskiStarsMia FarrowJohn CassavetesRuth GordonA young couple trying for a baby moves into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, where they find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.man Polanski’s 1968 classic had to be the second on this list. Its terrifying atmosphere and the spectacular performances by everyone, especially Ruth Gordon and Mia Farrow, make it memorable, but it’s also a great film about witchcraft that uses it as a metaphor for the paranoias of motherhood and the prisons of womanhood.
Polanski’s work with Ira Levin’s novel is outstanding in the way it makes Rosemary’s plight visually relatable and perceptible. The portrayal of the neighbor couple, of course, is not positive, but Polanski uses them as a tool for a markedly liberating and, yes, terrifying story. It’s a timeless classic that frightens and provokes in the same way it did almost 50 years ago. - DirectorRoger CormanStarsVincent PricePeter LorreBoris KarloffA magician, who has been turned into a raven, turns to a former sorcerer for help.
- DirectorSam RaimiStarsCate BlanchettKatie HolmesKeanu ReevesA fortune teller with extrasensory perception is asked to help find a young woman who has mysteriously disappeared.
- DirectorJean CocteauRené ClémentStarsJean MaraisJosette DayMila ParélyA beautiful young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious beast, who wishes to marry her.
- DirectorIsao TakahataStarsChloë Grace MoretzJames CaanMary SteenburgenKaguya is a beautiful young woman coveted by five nobles. To try to avoid marrying a stranger she doesn't love, she sends her suitors on seemingly impossible tasks. But she will have to face her fate and punishment for her choices.
- DirectorSidney HayersStarsPeter WyngardeJanet BlairMargaret JohnstonA woman who may be a witch defends her husband from forces attempting to harm him.This forgotten gem features would-be blonde bombshell Janet Blair as the wife of a powerful college professor that discovers that she’s been practicing rituals of witchcraft for years. The rational-minded fellow forces her to destroy all of her charms and devices, but she warns him that her protection is necessary because dangerous adversaries are eyeing to destroy his life.
The lesson: always listen to a witch’s warning. Using rudimentary techniques and the power of its storytelling, Night of the Eagle is an effective thriller, but especially an interesting vision about witchcraft as a protective and beneficial spiritual practice. More than 50 years later, it maintains its uniqueness and power. - DirectorBenjamin ChristensenStarsBenjamin ChristensenElisabeth ChristensenMaren PedersenFictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in Eastern Europe.One of the earliest portrayals of witchcraft on film is also the must-see in the category. This horror documentary was revolutionary not only for its themes but for its contribution to the widespread use of reenactments on the genre. Director Benjamin Christensen constructs some truly scary and beautiful sequences in his pursuit of a detailed and truthful portrayal of witchcraft through the ages.
Produced in Sweden, it’s perhaps the most essential documentary of its time alongside Nanook of the North, of course. At 91 minutes, it contains influential footage that has impacted the way we see witchcraft in movies and, at the same time, has never quite been matched even almost 100 years later. - DirectorWilliam CottrellDavid HandWilfred JacksonStarsAdriana CaselottiHarry StockwellLucille La VerneExiled into the dangerous forest by her wicked stepmother, a princess is rescued by seven dwarf miners who make her part of their household.From the very beginning of the era of Disney animated feature films, witches have proven to be handy antagonists. Sleeping Beauty is one of the prime examples, but 22 years earlier, Snow White’s simplistic “Evil Queen” (whose actual name is apparently “Grimhilde”) laid the foundation for so many tropes to come. One gets the sense, watching this film today, that the animators wanted to depict the Queen as a classical, wart-nosed witch all along, but the film’s major plot device—that the queen is a desperate contender for “fairest of them all”—dictates that she can’t take on what might be considered her true form until she comes to Snow in disguise as a hunchbacked old crone. Her scheme to trick Snow into eating a poisoned apple seems appropriately biblical in nature, which only makes sense—given that witches were historically depicted as the consorts of Satan, the metaphor likely still resounded with those 1937 audiences. And indeed, the queen is eventually struck down by nothing short of a bolt of lightning, signifying the hand of God himself. This early in cinema history, you couldn’t exactly separate a witch from her scriptural damnation. —Jim Vorel
- DirectorGeorge MillerStarsJack NicholsonCherSusan SarandonThree single women in a picturesque village have their wishes granted, at a cost, when a mysterious and flamboyant man arrives in their lives.George Miller’s great and sometimes underrated horror comedy The Witches of Eastwick has the benefit of an outstanding cast (Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jack Nicholson, Veronica Cartwright, Richard Jenkins…) and a whip-smart script that translates every allegory in John Updike’s novel to the screen with perfection.
As it tells the tale of three women being seduced by the evil powers of a not particularly decent or handsome men, and then the tale of them turning the table on him by joining forces, Eastwick uses the concept of witchcraft to underline the concept of sisterhood, and it works wonders. Plus, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer are definitely some girls I would love to hang out with.
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How witchcraft is depicted in film can seem highly contingent upon when and where that film is set. Colonial America? Get ready for a horror show of paranoia and suspicion, à la The Crucible or The Witch. If it’s modern high society, on the other hand, there’s a certain sex appeal inherent to witchcraft—an offhand metaphor for hedonistic women able to get exactly what they want, à la The Craft or Practical Magic. The Witches of Eastwick falls into the latter camp, buoyed by a vampy sense of charm and four leads who perfectly captured the moment: Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher as a trio of comely witches alternatingly seduced/hounded by that most rakish of Old Scratch portrayers, Jack Nicholson. As the antagonist, Nicholson delights in the Earth’s tactile pleasures, luxuriating in causing misfortune along the way. If witches have historically been portrayed as the consorts of the devil, The Witches of Eastwick simply modifies that trope into a more modern one—here, they’re badass, jilted lovers. If Nicholson had a devilish hearse, you can be sure they’d puncture the tires and key the paint. It’s a film that delights in petty, feel-good vengeance. —Jim Vorel
https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/witches/the-25-best-movies-about-witches/#19-eve-s-bayou - DirectorHiromasa YonebayashiStarsHana SugisakiRyunosuke KamikiYûki AmamiBased on "The Little Broomstick" by Mary Stewart, a strange flower grants a girl magic powers.
- DirectorHayao MiyazakiStarsKirsten DunstMinami TakayamaRei SakumaA young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.
- DirectorRon ClementsJohn MuskerStarsJodi BensonSamuel E. WrightRene AuberjonoisA mermaid princess makes a Faustian bargain in an attempt to become human and win a prince's love.There’s no shortage of witchy adversaries in the depth of the Disney Vault, but Ursula is arguably the queen of them all. Certainly the “sea-witch” is integral to the plot of The Little Mermaid, and functions as the central node of the film’s bargain and “ticking clock” mechanic that Ariel must receive True Love’s Kiss within three days in order to avert catastrophe. She’s a witch in the truly arch sense of the stereotype—hanging out in an indisputably evil lair, ready to make Faustian deals with whomever might be unlucky enough to come along with an easily exploitable desire. She sings; she dances; she’s glam as hell—at least until growing into a giant kraken, in a finale that is genuinely more horrific than you probably remember. But that’s how you protect your head-witch-in-charge status. —Jim Vorel
- DirectorLes ClarkClyde GeronimiEric LarsonStarsMary CostaBill ShirleyEleanor AudleyAfter being snubbed by the royal family, a malevolent fairy places a curse on a princess which only a prince can break, along with the help of three good fairies.
- DirectorRobert StrombergStarsAngelina JolieElle FanningSharlto CopleyA vengeful fairy is driven to curse an infant princess, only to discover that the child could be the one person who can restore peace to their troubled land.
- DirectorMario BavaStarsBarbara SteeleJohn RichardsonAndrea ChecchiA vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant.Another Italian master of horror, Mario Bava’s best incursion into witchcraft is most certainly 1960’s Black Sunday, the perfectly stylized and acted story of a seventeenth century witch brought back 200 years later to terrorize the descendants of her enemies, preferably through the young body of her own descendant. The witch is even named Princess Asa Vajda, I mean…
Bava’s genius was in the way it used simple tactics to keep the audience enthralled, establishing so many of today’s horror tropes and staging clichés. The mask the aforementioned princess is buried in is still terrifying to this day, and Bava’s portrayal of witchcraft is a lot less negative than most of the art of the time. - DirectorKen RussellStarsVanessa RedgraveOliver ReedDudley SuttonIn 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier's protection of the city of Loudun from the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu is undermined by a sexually repressed nun's accusation of witchcraft.Ken Russell is somewhat of a cult hero for his very peculiar and yet surprisingly accessible films – perhaps the best of which is The Devils, a 1971 horror thriller depicting a mad witch-hunter sent to a 17th century French town to investigate the claim that a local priest is in command of a devil-possessed nunnery.
It’s a metaphor for tyranny in the way it depicts the Cardinal Richelieu controlled France, but also an allegory about sexual abuse and sexual repression, with a stellar performances by the always great Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed. Terrifying, surreal and yet terrifyingly real, The Devils is one of those cult classics that ought to be better appreciated by horror aficionados. - DirectorNeil BurgerStarsEdward NortonJessica BielPaul GiamattiIn turn-of-the-century Vienna, a magician uses his abilities to secure the love of a woman far above his social standing.
- CreatorBrad FalchukRyan MurphyHalley FeifferStarsLady GagaKathy BatesAngela BassettAn anthology series centering on different characters and locations, showcasing different aspects of horror.
- DirectorNicolas RoegStarsAnjelica HustonMai ZetterlingJasen FisherA young boy stumbles onto a witch convention and must stop them, even after he has been turned into a mouse.