Vampires and zombies feasted voraciously at the horror box office with hits like "Sinners" and "28 Days Later," setting the stage for a cinematic summer seemingly dominated by the triumphant return of classic monsters. As Del Toro's "Frankenstein" prepares to mesmerize audiences next week, it appears that these iconic creatures are stealing the spotlight. Yet, lurking in the shadows of this narrative, omnipresent yet underappreciated, is an old-school hobgoblin that has made a silent but persistent comeback across several noteworthy new titles: the witch. Within a single week this month, "Wednesday" made its eerie return to Netflix for a second season, Zach Cregger's "Weapons" left viewers spellbound with a scene-stealing sorceress, and Chuck Russell's remake of "Witchboard" swapped the original's sinister warlock for a far more perilous witch. Additionally, "Bring Her Back," from The Philippous, revolved around a shadowy occult group whose dark reincarnation spells propelled a grief-stricken mother into the depths of witchcraft and child abuse.
The witch has emerged as an unwavering presence in the horror landscape of the past decade. In 2013, CNN noted a sudden surge, remarking that "Hollywood now can’t seem to get enough of witches." Following the genre-defining success of "The Witch" three years later, A24's array of so-called "elevated horror" films cemented this archetype as a staple throughout the decade, with films like "Hereditary," "Suspiria," and even Richard Stanley's "Color Out of Space" contributing to this trend. In my new book, "That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film," I argue that cycles of witch horror on screen have historically coincided with periods of heightened feminist activism and visibility, serving as a keen indicator of women's status in our culture. The witch has always served as a stand-in for fears surrounding women's power and influence, starting with the Medieval Catholic Church's condemnation of women who deviated from their traditional roles as wives and mothers, encompassing midwives, herbalists, and women of all ages who engaged in sex outside of marriage, leading to mass hysteria and femicide.
Since the 19th century, feminists have embraced this figure as a badge of honor and resistance in pamphlets, cartoons, and protest actions, a fact that has been evoked in cycles of witch horror ever since. The Second Wave feminism of the 1960s, coinciding with the so-called "Occult Revival" — a renewed interest in New Age spirituality that dominated discourse and infused the counterculture with astrology, the zodiac, and Ouija boards — gave rise to films like "Rosemary's Baby" and George Romero's underrated "Season of the Witch." The anger and frustration of the Third Wave feminists of the 1990s, tied to what some called the "teen witch phenomenon," were mirrored in the rebellious punk rock covens of "The Craft" and series like "Charmed." It is unsurprising, then, that as feminism gained momentum in the 2010s — with the birth of the #MeToo movement, the Women's March, and a notable influx of women running for office in 2017 alone, prompting The Washington Post to declare it "the second year of the woman" after 1992 — alongside a significant spike in New Age beliefs (a 2014 Pew poll revealed a surge in practicing American Pagans and Wiccans, with hexing activists like Brock Turner and Brett Kavanaugh becoming commonplace), witches also ascended to pop cultural prominence. These witches were portrayed in overtly feminist terms ("The Witch" was deemed "wildly feminist" by Wired) and celebrated by many women audience members as reflections of feminine rage and expressions of a desire to incinerate the patriarchy.
Cinema, much like politics, functions in cyclical rhythms. As the liberal spirit of the 1960s gradually yielded to the conservative paranoia and disillusionment of the 1970s, portrayals of witches began to lose their punch, eventually transforming into sources of comedy and appeasement, even in ostensibly empowering films such as "The Witches of Eastwick," amidst the anti-feminist backlash and Satanic Panic of the Reagan era. Flash forward to the 2020s, where QAnon and other religiously infused conspiracies have revived the anti-supernatural fervor of the 1980s, rendering the cinematic witches of the 2010s seemingly overdone and过度泛滥 in the marketplace. A meta-documentary that delved into the feminist undertones of the witch archetype garnered a lackluster review, dismissing Elizabeth Sankey's "Witches" as "trivial" and contending that the director merely "unraveled witch tropes we've all grown weary of hearing." In essence, feminist witches had become a worn-out narrative.
Yet, "Witches" was not an isolated case, and oversaturation构成仅为故事的一半。 Much like the 1970s, the political climate has undergone a monumental shift since 2020. The fervent energy of the Women's March and the subsequent wave of civil rights activism during the pandemic has faded, supplanted by anxious debates concerning the Schlaffley-esque influence of Tradwives and MAHA moms, as women are exhorted by the Trump administration to re-embrace the "traditional family" and abandon the workforce. Reminiscent of that decade, when the Occult Revival was so ingrained in American culture that films like "The Exorcist" could casually toss around lines about "secret witch cults" at cocktail parties, and audiences would instantly grasp the reference, witches have been assimilated into the broader supernatural horror subgenre, lurking at the fringes of films like "Bring Her Back" and "Longlegs," where the word "witch" is never uttered, yet the allusion is unmistakable. Unlike Thomasin in "The Witch," these witches are not the kind you cheer for; they are the ones who pose a threat to your family.
Witches have served as an anti-feminist symbol long before the feminist movement came into being, used as a benchmark for proper feminine conduct and to frighten misbehaving children back to bed, lest they be consumed whole or transformed into soulless demons, as exemplified by the missing third-graders in "Weapons." It is still early in this decade. As historians remind us, the 1960s didn't conclude in 1970, and the neon-tinged, nostalgia-soaked 1980s that we recognize today didn't truly commence until around 1984, with films like "Back to the Future" and "Ghostbusters." A woman I conversed with during my book tour this summer lamented that "Stranger Things," another Satanic Panic-infused piece of our pop culture, overlooked the fact that many people's memories of that decade were more aligned with '70s-style "wood paneling, saltines, and smooth peanut butter" than arcade games and hair metal.
The witch remains a feminist symbol: This week, Florence and the Machine released a new music video for the single "Everybody Scream," which draws more heavily from the feminist aesthetics of the 2010s than the supernatural scare tactics of films like "Talk to Me," and the girl power ethos of "Wicked" continues to be one of the most prominent examples of the witch archetype in today's culture. Nevertheless, as this summer's slew of witch horror films attests, the witch's significance in our current climate has undergone a noticeable shift in tone, signaling the radical conservative realignment that is in the process of reshaping our entire cultural tapestry. The triumphant final scenes of "The Witch," where a young, oppressed woman ascends into the air to join her coven around the bonfire, laughing with abandon, are a distant memory. If our nation continues down this political path, don't be surprised to find yourself at the movies once again witnessing a witch being burned at the stake.
