SALON writes: Could a horror movie set in the 17th century explain America’s current insanity?:
Is “The Witch,” under the surface, a story about sexual abuse, and about the vicious combination of guilt and jealousy that can poison relationships between mother and daughter, or between sisters? That’s certainly one way to read it. Is it, on a grander scale, an allegorical tale about religious hysteria and paranoid delusion, and even about the current of self-hatred and self-destructiveness that lies at the heart of the American experience? I would strongly argue for yes. But those aren’t mutually exclusive options — and it’s also a story about a well-meaning American family confronted by evil.
There is a witch in the woods, after all. We see her sneaking away with infant Sam, the unbaptized babe so crucial to certain diabolical rituals. Later in the film, we see her lure Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), Thomasin’s slightly younger brother, into her lair with a display of legs and cleavage entirely without precedent in 17th-century America. Is it relevant that we have already seen Caleb, a devout and loyal son, eyeing his sister’s body with the first stirrings of prurient interest? It might be. I’m sure someone will write a piece this week suggesting that Eggers is playing into misogynistic stereotype by implying that there may really have been child-killing witches in the New England woods, who could fly and who engaged in unorthodox sexual practices and who had signed their names in blood in the Black Book.
