Editorials
Wouldst Thou Like To Live Deliciously?: Looking Back on ‘The Witch’ Four Years Later
As a New Englander, I have the privilege of coming from a land steeped in horror. Whether it be the spooky Stephen King, the gothic poetics of Edgar Allan Poe, or the twisted mind of HP Lovecraft, New England is a land of various haunts and ghouls. With that said, in the four years since it was released, I’ve developed a sentimental attachment of sorts to Robert Eggers’ The Witch.
That attachment isn’t purely because of the film’s fascinating depiction of old New England, or its creepy imagery, or the lovable Black Philip – it’s mostly because of what it has done for horror cinema. Not only does The Witch offer a brilliant narrative, it has also influenced how horror films explore dread.
When the trailer for The Witch first released, there was a great deal of hype surrounding its chilling presentation. Who was “the witch?” What sort of evil would we experience? But while the film did involve a witch, what it ended up being was not what moviegoers may have expected. For all its fantastical elements, The Witch is much more grounded in realism. That said, what the film actually provides is an even more fascinating experience of disturbing horror. When it comes to the film’s titular witch, she only ever makes brief appearances. Her presence is primarily meant to stir the anxiety that The Witch is built on.
For The Witch isn’t really about witches or Satan – it is about the anxieties of folklore and religious ideals, and their impact on a family.
The Witch follows Thomasin (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) and her family, who are banished from their colony over religious differences. When they find new land, the family begins to grow crops and start a new life for themselves. One day, while Thomasin is playing peek-a-boo with her baby brother Samuel, the child is kidnapped. In a brief sequence, we see our titular witch sacrificing the child as a means to infuse magic into her broomstick.
As Katherine (the mother, played by Kate Dickie) grieves for her lost child, Thomasin’s brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) asks his father about Samuel’s fate; since the baby was not baptized, Caleb is fearful that he is in Hell. The father, William (Ralph Ineson), pushes Caleb to not think of such notions. Katherine places blame on Thomasin for losing Samuel. Early on in the film, in a conversation with William, Katherine discusses the idea of sending Thomasin off to serve another family, as well as her fear of their crops not doing well. We also learn that a special trinket of hers has gone missing. In a later dinner scene, Katherine aggressively approaches Thomasin about this missing trinket, believing she is to blame.
In actuality, however, William sold Katherine’s trinket for hunting supplies, but has decided to stay silent. He tells Caleb his secret, who lies to his mother when the subject is first brought up, as to cover for his father. When William finally owns up to selling the cup, Katherine briefly turns on him, and all of a sudden becomes warmer towards Thomasin.
While all of this is going on, there is antagonism between Thomasin and her sister Mercy (Ellie Grainger). Mercy calls Thomasin a witch, the latter playing into the comment and threatening the former. Mercy continues to agitate Thomasin with these witch comments. Throughout the film, Thomasin and the viewer witness Mercy and her brother Jonas (Lucas Dawson) speaking to Black Phillip, the family’s billy goat; this becomes an important point for a major conflict later on.
After Caleb comes across the witch in the woods, he returns home inflected with an illness. Prior to a convulsion he suffers, Mercy speaks to that earlier incident where Thomasin said she was a witch and threatened her. Caleb dies and Thomasin runs off; in an attempt to defend herself, she tells William how the siblings have been communicating with Black Phillip (who she claims is the devil).
Though the film ends on a supernatural note, it is the family dynamic that serves as an incredible driving force of horror. From the moment that Samuel is stolen, the family’s trust for one another begins to unravel, creating a spiral of deceit. Through their lies and hurtful actions, they hypocritically begin to break the ideals of their religious beliefs. At certain points in the film, Katherine acknowledges the issues surrounding the family, repeating how they have been cursed by God and are damned. That sort of anxiety that she displays is part of what makes the film’s horror so intriguing – for so much of the family’s tensions lie in the realm of religious fears.
The viewer is never given explicit detail as to the differences between the family and that of their colony (regarding religious beliefs). Over the course of the film, however, we come to witness William and Katherine’s religious ideology, and how those beliefs are pressed upon the children’s lives.
Another important point to note is how only the viewer is truly ever aware of the witch’s existence. As far as the family is concerned, there is no proof of her. In his sickened state, Caleb cannot speak to having met the witch; but his illness is what kicks off the greater hysteria surrounding the idea of her. Eventually, matters such as Samuel’s disappearance and the crops not doing well come to be blamed on the family being cursed. As the antagonism rises among everyone, so does the belief of something supernatural being at work.
Through all their struggles, the family’s belief system and anger is what ultimately destroys them. Rather than working together and approaching things with a spiritually built out of love, they lash out in fear. With this focus in mind, we come to see how The Witch is truly a tale about how folklore and strict religious ideals have the power to influence people; how they have the potential to stir fear, to take hold of us in our darkest times.
The Witch received critical acclaim upon its release, proving to be an incredible work of slow-burn, atmospheric, and rich horror. Since its release, there has been a fascinating shift in the genre; though we continue to see our fair share of adrenaline-fueled gore in films, The Witch’s sense of presentation has spread throughout horror cinema. One need not look further than films such as The Ritual and Hereditary to see how The Witch’s haunting atmosphere has influenced recent horror. Of course each of these films spark with originality, but they share a spiritual similarity to that of The Witch. Not only do they each embrace a slow-burn build up, but they use their presentation to explore grief.
Some of the great recent works in horror have contained a focus on grief – such as through the lens of family related trauma. The Witch is not the first film to approach the subject of grief; that said, it provides an intriguing angle in exploring the concept. The Witch works to slowly unnerve the viewer. Through the family’s mental descent, we come to feel uncomfortable among their mind games. Other recent works of horror have also embraced this cerebral quality, such as Goodnight Mommy and Midsommar.
This perspective of horror lends itself to establishing a more immersive mood – providing an opportunity for viewers to soak in emotion. Through the downfall of Thomasin and her family, we come to see how folklore has warped their perception of the world. We experience their dread and fear as they tear apart. By approaching the narrative in a slower, atmospheric manner, Eggers successfully offers a work that weaves the viewer into the family’s hysteria.
As we move into 2020, we see even more works of similar cinematic style (such as this month’s The Lodge). It’s weird in a way to realize that The Witch, a film that has greatly impacted the horror genre, is only four years old. Robert Eggers really hit it out of the park with his debut film. His sophomore picture, The Lighthouse, also proved to be a brilliant tale that involved folkloric depth.
New England has always been a land of horror. In revisiting the land’s history and presenting such a unique story, Eggers has helped to kick off a new wind in horror – one that is ethereal in its emotional explorations. The Witch’s unsettling tension, environmental mood, and thematic depths will easily cement it as one of the most significant horror films of the 2010s.
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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