FILM ME IN

Why witches don’t scare any more.

I recently saw Robert Eggers 1630s New England gothic horror film The Witch. It’s the stuff of genuine nightmares, a sure-(camp)fire fright-fest in an age of black magic, witchcraft, Satanism and mysticism targeting God fearing victims living isolated, beside a foreboding forest that’s inhabited by a witch. The film ticks all the fear-perpetrating boxes you could hope for: there’s the tried and true Hitchcockian fear-in-the-home (aka Shadow Of A Doubt) factor- nothing’s quite as terrifying as witnessing evil enter the doors of your one safe sanctuary and here it bursts through in spades, its mass seeping into the families confines utilising the black art of manipulation.  There’s a healthy balance of what you do and don’t see, with satisfying glimpses at the face of the evil being represented, although a great deal belongs to your own imagination. There’s a perfect cast of characters and in this case old-testament, God-fearing victims: a strict, overly-religious mother, her powerless husband, a fresh take on eerie young twins, a possessed older son (the result of a poison apple, a wink that certainly did not go unnoticed) and finally our young girl protagonist who’s actually able to see the ‘forest for the trees’. There’s also inhuman contributions in the form of a spellbound goat, a menacing crow and an even more sinister rabbit if you can believe that! All set in the vertiginous stomach-turning shadow of the witch herself who resides within the neighbouring woods.

Production values also require a hefty mention – the quazi documentary feel of recent horror and thriller films (i.e. Goodnight Mummy / The Hunt) allows for an air of unpredictability. The mis-en-scene is one for the ages and should be a part of every film curriculum from here on in – completely drained of colour, each frame is perfectly realised as though you were watching a living painting. The open frames that force you to look over the characters’ shoulders in case something is creeping up behind them, made famous by Rosemary’s Baby, has the power to convince you that every inch of the screen harbours some importance. The carefully written dialogue is faithful to the era and English setting, and finally the off kilter soundtrack harks back to and rivals The Exorcist and 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Despite its unsettling nature, its chilling ambience and its crossing a line into some frightfully dark territory, what disappointed me about the The Witch, through no fault of the film itself, was that I wasn’t scared! It had all the makings to ensure the skin would crawl and in essence should have rattled me to my core as I am certainly susceptible to such emotions when confronted with films that can effectively deliver a good scare, but alas this was an experience of mere enjoyment rather than terror. I even calculated the perfect time and space to ensure its maximum effect – I watched The Witch in a dark room, I was all alone (bar the sleeping dog beside me) and I was nursing a hangover which these days makes me prone to anxiety and paranoia even if the night before didn’t include any stupid statements that can’t be retracted or irreversible silly antics. So with a heart already pounding before the introduction even began, why didn’t this jolt me into a week of sleepless oblivion as it rightly should have?

I even went as far as to wack on the latest film adaptation of the play that shall not be named otherwise known as Macbeth to see if the witches overseeing the royal rise of Michael Fassbinder’s depiction would fare any better in my eager mind. I figure we’ve entered an age of a more realistic and believable witch, one that can assimilate into regular society without causing a ‘witch hunt’ or ending up being burned at the stake, which technically appears more tantalising than the cartoonish versions I’ve previously held so dear. Again, to my disappointment the witches of MacBeth were of course exactly as I expected – blink-and-you’ll-miss-them, non-descript and merely human like ladies with whispering voices, and although the film would have no doubt made Shakespeare proud on all counts, for me, I wanted the toil and trouble of pointy hats, warts and cauldrons oozing green and spilling eyeballs and frogs.

I recalled a story a film lecturer had told in an auditorium one Monday afternoon back when I was a university student many moons ago. Usually such lectures were in reference to a film we had seen at 10am on a Monday morning and I have no idea how this story came up but he suddenly held my full attention which was quite a feat considering I was usually exhausted and slept through a majority of films and on occasion the lectures. To be fair as a late teen who had recently discovered alcohol and Melbourne’s night life, a 10am movie followed by a lecture was a hard sell. To arrive bright-eyed and bushy tailed and expected to find value in a two hour silent Buster Keaton epic at that hour was virtually impossible. The point I believe the film lecturer was trying to make, throughout my sleepy haze, was that not all the wholesome films are as innocent as they appear and the example he used was Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. As a young boy his mother had taken him to the cinema to see the classic cartoon feature and he became so incredibly overwhelmed and petrified by the evil Queen as she disguises herself as an old Hag and offers Snow White a poison apple, that he stood up in the cinema and shouted ‘fuck you witch!’ then immediately ran from the theatre unable to return. He also made the point that despite such a wholesome family-friendly film under the Disney banner, no form of on screen evil has ever conjured up such a reaction before or since. He went on to tell similar tales of how Disney villains have had profound effects on young children but his tale of the evil queen or let’s be honest, witch, I could certainly relate to.

It got me thinking of my own childhood fear of what quite possibly became the most archetypical witch of them all, The Wicked Witch Of The West. Before we made her a loving and tender heroine and empathised with her, thanks to her back-story riddled with bullying in the book and more famously the theatre production Wicked, this witch was simply on a warpath for revenge against the innocent girl from Kansas who dropped a house on her sister. From that split second before she arrives on screen, the music goes noticeably askew as she is announced via a cloud of black smoke, and as a child this is where I reached a certifiable stage of utter panic. Hell, if it wasn’t for the presence of a calm and collected ‘good witch’ on the premises, you can be sure that she would have wreaked havoc on the entire Munchkin city abruptly ending the film in Munchkin genocide.

A renowned stage performer and fan of The Wizard Of Oz books, Margaret Hamilton was taken by surprise when she was asked to play the witch, like any other role would have been offered! But fortunately she got into the spirit of the role, for Hamilton absolutely mops the floor with this Garland newcomer and anyone else unlucky enough to be sharing the screen with her. From that piercing voice to her imposing figure draped in black whilst clinging to a broomstick, this opened up a whole world of evil upon my virginal eyes. I covered them too whenever she appeared always peeking through the cracks, for make no mistake, the wicked witch of the west was hell-bent for death and what’s worse was that she also seemed to be enjoying it. Like the notion that we ride roller-coasters to deal with our fear of the grave and when death doesn’t come we want to ride it again – that was The Wizard Of Oz for me, I had to face this fear again and again and despite the fact that a bucket of water would melt her to a plume of smoke, with every rewound VHS viewing she arose to terrify me all over again.

From that moment forth it’s been hard to cop a chill from another witch. In fact witches didn’t really interest me after the wicked one whenever I would encounter them on film. Off the top of my head there has been a serious witch lull ever since. I’m sure it’s a great novel but The Witches of Eastwick did nothing for me, Practical Magic a rom-com, The Craft lame, that awful room of witches in Four Rooms was just that – awful, it’s as though modern witches in Hollywood were a comedic joke. You just couldn’t make them frightening any more. That was, and with the help of some clever internet marketing even if comparatively primitive by today’s standards, we were blessed with, at least the anticipation, of The Blair Witch Project. You bet I got caught up reading about the history of this fabricated story as though it were real, and I wasn’t alone, I remember the world had collectively got caught up in this hoax and believed the resulting film – hand held footage of teenagers lost in the woods and being pursued by a witch – was all real. As an avid documentarian, as in to say I just filmed everything from drunk friends playing the pokies, to live music, to bland conversations, the forth wall continually being broken to the tune of ‘turn it off!’ The very idea of ‘found footage’ used within the horror realm was an absolute revelation!

When it finally arrived in cinemas, I saw The Blair Witch Project twice! ‘Twice?’ I hear you say! Yes and let it be clear that I saw it twice because I couldn’t get past the fact that we didn’t see shit! I was convinced that I had perhaps missed something, there had to have been a pay-off unclear to the naked eye, perhaps I wasn’t watching all corners of the screen carefully enough. By the time I had seen it twice, word had been made official that there was in fact, nothing to see. Now I appreciate the idea of using your imagination but this lack of a clear and visible manifestation hurt. To be fair on Blair though, after one screening I did have to drive a friend home who lived in country Victoria. Although I had driven there before it had always been light outside and the scenic little drive on a dusty old dirt road was certainly no chore, but by the time the film concluded in Melbourne’s city it was pitch black before we hit the dirt road. In the light of my car headlights on the high beam setting I was willing to allow my Blair witch fears of recent hours come to life. Jolting past imposing gum trees with nothing but the black unknown in the distance, I did become somewhat certain that a witch (the appearance of which I still couldn’t form in my mind) was set to jump out in front of the car at any moment.

Fifteen years after the Blair witch disappeared never to be seen or unseen again, certainly not on my DVD player anyway, a new trailer came along that had burned and nestled itself into my mind. I was ready to submit to the sinister fairy-tale era chills that The Witch promised to deliver. And sadly it delivered on all levels except for my own fear and for that I blame you Margaret Hamilton and your depiction of a witch that defines perfection and a witch that cannot be matched over seventy five years after you venomously spat the words ‘who killed my sister?’

But there’s hope, perhaps some tech savvy six year old child in this digital age where anything is attainable and parents are finding it ever more difficult to monitor viewing habits, will download his or her own copy of The Witch and maybe, just maybe, it will pollute their minds, infect and blacken their souls and they will become mentally poisoned by this new version of on old wives tale and devour the metaphoric apple whole. I have faith that it will be remembered and may even replace the dated and daggy wicked witch of the west in the hearts and minds of future generations. With hope, we can exchange songs like  ‘ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead’ and most certainly that theatre production updated tune about defying gravity or whatever, and instead, the new breed of witch enthusiasts can skip down the streets harmonising Gregorian chants at the highest falsetto pitch wearing hand washed sheets that resemble a nun’s habit with bloody goat hoof prints running down the murky cloth. ‘Who killed my sister?’ Hell, it could be any one of these kids!