Change Your Image
lesurrealisme-26250
Reviews
Witches in the Woods (2019)
Should be titled Witch-hunt in the Woods: an allegory
Should you watch this movie or clean out the fridge since it's raining and literally nothing else is on? Well, up to you, but eventually you might and this might help.
Expect here the same # of witches any witch hunt ever actually found : 0.
5 stars: 4 for the movie + 1 for what they actually tried to do.
What we have is an accused woman, and yes we could ponder why she would take a trip with such hostile company but perhaps staying in the dorms was worse, hiding in her room living off crisps and even meeting the enmity of her roommate who that first night reassured her she believed her to be the victim of gang rape but has since started to believe everyone else. (And hey why should she hide and change her life and not try to go about her planned trip?! Her rapists are still going about their lives.)
That first quote about belief and ideas possessing the mind should be a big clue to what the movie is really about. Are these characters stock that never seem to rise above place holders for people we meet or have even been ourselves? Yes, most definitely, maybe the point is so we can see ourselves in this casual witch hunt of someone already not doing well.
During a seizure, and after most definitely hours of exposure, some guy accuses her of doing "something" to his brother. When the obvious thing happens when someone sticks their finger inside the mouth of someone having a seizure, she's accused of attacking.
2 things to note - we never see her attack anyone, we see her pleading and scared when she isn't totally out of it. Also as anyone who has suffered from hypothermia for hours can attest, critical thinking becomes impossibly difficult the longer hypothermia continues, this is proven by science. So kids that aren't survivalists making dumb moves while distracted by arguments & pettiness is a touch more understandable. I might forget when the first match breaks to pull off paperboard from the matchbox to shore it up or double it with the second match and really choke up on it for the strike if some dude is yelling in my ear about "she attacked, she's acting weird". Obviously us toasty warm at home viewers are like - she's traumatized and this isn't helping, can we focus! but also these kids were uncertain to begin with...
Haven't we all engaged in casual witch hunting? Some scandal in the news or some girl at school...whether on the sidelines not speaking up though we know the statistics for false rape accusations are infinitesimally low, or outright blame-the-victim gaslighting.
We see Mean Girl and Aggro Guy accusing quickly but when even Philip our last male feminist ally doubts Alison we/Jill doubt even what we've seen with our own eyes. From the reviews even, she is granted a supernatural level of agency over her own body and events in the story, despite showing none of that on screen. Alison is literally abandoned in the car and wakes up with injured MG in the back, and even at the start is retraumatized in that gross gas station bathroom with bad wiring when Jill wanders off to advocate for bears. That bathroom would traumatize me, I'm sure lights on reveals a few rats and roaches. (But seriously Jill why not mention the illegal traps - lesson to us all I guess, just assume there are always illegal traps!)
So anyhow when Jill plunges that ski pole to its final depth, we all have killed or contributed to the social or functional death of the accused woman. Hunter dude shows us that no the woods are not witch-haunted, he's there all the time hunting illegally and he is ostensibly fine. Lesson to us all don't engage in witch hunting and restock that auto emergency kit.
The Wind (2018)
Gaslighting + enforced isolation
First - don't expect horror, a better mindset would be suspense/drama. The disorienting effect of achronological storytelling requires attention, my take was a great job obfuscating whether there were supernatural or psychological forces & bringing me into the mind of the main character, because we look back on memories in our minds out of order too.
To me the demons of the prairie were normal demons humans face, temptations/thoughts - we see jealousy, perversion of the marriage bed, vengeance - almost everything in that pamphlet (I paused to read). Combined not only with natural isolation but enforced through absenteeism/abandonment/betrayal. Some viewers thought hubby was good for the time - I can't view a cheating husband as good for any century, he was absent helping the neighbors & helping himself to the neighbors womb, off in "town" - maybe at a saloon/brothel, and even when present unsympathetic to his wife being driven crazy by the pressure of environment and his actions.
Then he would gaslight her by saying the equivalent of that century's 'baby it's in your head, I'd never cheat on you, it's just the two of us' - the last part he actually does say. Further the only friend she could have he takes away through cheating, isolating her even when around neighbors. Perhaps he behaved this way in the city and when she states it isn't like the city where neighbors remain strangers & its a luxury they don't have, she is saying 'I'll have to know the other woman this time'.
I'm not convinced it's mental illness any more than any of us would feel in that situation, which is just not good for mental health no matter who you are. When reading from books Emma reassures Lizzy that it's not a spirit it's just a character in the book - which to me pointed to the writer saying explicitly to us viewers - not a literal demon just characters in the movie - Emma & Isaac betraying their spouses & neighbor, Lizzy eaten by betrayal/wrath/desires for destruction, Gideon pretending ignorance/weakness (I mean c'mon he knew!).
The line from Frankenstein about not necessarily being happy with a mate but at least being less miserable in loneliness totally exemplified Lizzy's feelings that even though it might not have been a happy marriage at least when it really was the two of them it was less miserable and that's been taken away.
In that light I thought it was a great movie, slowly paced and on purpose agonizingly so, forcing confusion, that feeling of dread, of something coming that is awful - and you have to wonder if you're giving in to demons or forced to react to circumstances set up by others, maybe our actions are a bit of both. But on the subject of what happened I totally disagree that is was open ended, I felt a definitive conclusion, we know what Lizzy did, we know what Emma + Isaac did, Isaac even says 'how long have you known?' and something like I know what you did - maybe they all knew the whole time she killed Emma since it was her gun and only Lizzy was struggling with facing it.
The Reverend & lamb seem to confirm this is confusion for her, did she kill them, did something else, she struggles to decide, which is a replacement for killing Emma - her mind isn't there yet. And the final shot of her alone in the prairie, even in her bed and then not in her "marriage bed". The ambiguity is not about what occurred but about her struggle to accept reality, but we the viewer aren't left to decide what really happened, we have the clues & statements. She did take that advice and shoot the demons she saw.
Personally I spent a long time thinking it was supernatural and then I had to recount what was said and what we saw. Problems with access to glass windows and wood aside, this was a good movie but you have to sit and pay attention, which to me is what a good movie does. This made me pay attention and then think afterwards about what I saw. I'm reminded of Lizzy saying to Emma not to be unpleasant in front of the men and this sense of confinement of women expressing themselves and their needs (which also reminds me of that Mormon sentiment to 'stay sweet') and in this case the violent counter reactions to this restrictive enforced mental + physical isolation.
Aftermath (2016)
Best thing about the show - the reviews
There was nothing on so I steam watched the first six episodes and it was entertaining although puzzling why anyone behaved as the characters did. I would have given up if I had anything else I hadn't watched already. Two big issues no one mentioned: (spoiler here) was no one else bothered by the very young looking 16 year old having a relationship with a 28 year old?! Creepy city! I know it's the apocalypse but still, yuck! Next...why is anyone criticizing the Anne heche character as being feminist, or feminazi. There are huge misconceptions as to what feminism is and this isn't it; abrasive females who put down the life's work of their loving spouse are not feminists. Feminism is about equality not subjugation, the husband is a feminist, the wife mystifies me as to why she is with someone she doesn't even seem to respect or like; feminists respect and appreciate strong men. No one likes someone overbearing, no matter the gender. And people commenting about her need for more feminine traits to counter feminism mistakenly think that feminism is exclusive of femininity. I'm a feminist who wears skirts/dresses as often as possible and won't leave the house without lipstick and eye makeup, now about equal pay since I'm around 68 cents on the dollar.... End rant. That whole character is like a typical gun nut, and I say this valuing my right to have guns, but in my experience female gun nuts are actually quite misogynist, as are the people making weird anti-feminist comments.