The VVitch (2015) - Witches 1
Summary
Brian and Jeff Horror Joy begin a spooky-season series on witches by discussing Robert Eggers’ 2015 film The Witch, outlining its colonial New England setup in which an exiled Puritan family suffers escalating losses and turns toward suspicions of witchcraft and the devil, culminating in Black Phillip’s invitation to “live deliciously.”
They trace Western and Christian obsessions with witches to the Middle Ages, emphasizing Malleus Maleficarum’s patriarchal fixation on female sexuality, and connect witch labeling to control, scapegoating, and contemporary Christian nationalism.
The conversation links the film to Milton’s Paradise Lost via a “temptation narrative” reading, highlights dualisms (inside/outside, conceal/reveal, body/soul, girl/woman), and considers how Eggers’ period accuracy creates “prosthetic memory” while the horror largely arises from isolation, religious literalism, and family projection rather than constant supernatural spectacle.
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