The Witch, a Pure Perfection Film

When you are a demonic witch and you watch an horror film you feel insulted, hurt and disappointed. It took me a lot of time to see satanic movies with detachment and perspective and I try my best to not take it personally. 

I would like to share with you one of my favorite films ever: The Witch by Robert Eggers. I want to write in my personal space how I fell in love with this magnificent movie at the time. The soundtrack, especially the first song What Went We, is part of my spell work playlist.

Robert Eggers' directorial debut The Witch - A New England Folktale was a surprise to everyone. Due to the hype, I was expecting the worse - now it's hands down one of my favourite movies ever. I've rewatched it dozens of times. Amazingly crafted, rather nihilistic, and exquisite, the horror of the movie is subtle and intelligent, as it should be. 

I want to write in my personal space how I fell in love with this magnificent movie that I recommend all the time.

Demons Without Meaning: How Horror Emptied the Occult

Abrahamic religious teaches us that demons are nothing but pure evil, so casting them as villains in film easy, cheap and rewarding. The audience is already conditioned: a demon appears, danger is assumed. The result is evocative, hollow, and convenient. 

But make no mistake. Just like anyone else who defames them, horror film directors have no idea about demons. They don't even bother to do some homework before writing the script. Established entities are lifted from grimoires and repurposed to fit a fictional narrative, stripped of context, theology, and function.

Sometimes the choice is totally arbitrary. As Ari Aster, creator of Hereditary, openly admitted when asked about his use of Paimon: "I researched, looked for a demon and Paimon struck me as one that made sense. I just needed a name". Great, man.

After Hereditary, Paimon became publicly rebranded as a purely malevolent, child-sacrificing demon associated with insanity, possession, and nihilistic destruction. That image spread fast, especially through horror fandoms, TikTok occult content, and low-effort “demonology” blogs. 

This felt particular hurtful because Paimon is one of the friendliest demons you can work with. He is a teacher, a figure of authority and knowledge, associated with speech, philosophy, sciences, and mastery over hidden things. His function is entirely intellectual. There is no emphasis on bloodlust, madness, or random cruelty.

This happens often in this type of cinema: demons are reduced to vibes. 

What is funny is that horror films rarely use authentic demon sigils. When they do, they almost always alter them slightly. A line broken here, a curve reversed there, proportions distorted just enough to make them technically different. 

Are they afraid of being sued by the spirits?

The answer is simple: fear.

Sigils are not decorative symbols but concentrated signatures meant to establish contact. What’s interesting is that this hesitation exists even among filmmakers who openly admit they don’t believe in demons. You know... what if? Just in case. 

The Witch: When Horror Finally Took the Devil Seriously

This is precisely where Robert Eggers stands apart.

The filmmaker spent years researching the period - around 1630, a generation before the infamous Salem witch trials. Much of the narrative is drawn directly from contemporaneous accounts, sermons, and folk tales, and it shows. Nothing feels invented for convenience. Everything feels earned. The clothing is recreated with meticulous precision, the theology is historically coherent, and even the oppressive creepiness of the New England woods reflects how that landscape was perceived at the time: hostile, unknowable, spiritually dangerous and beautiful. 

The result is a film profoundly atmospheric, moody, and tense. I was struck by the rare consideration given to time, place, and belief, elements most horror films treat as interchangeable. 

Reading The VVitch

The Witch tells the story of a Puritan family cast out from their colony and forced to survive in the wilderness, away from civilization. The reason of the banishment is never fully explained. We only know that the father has crossed a line severe enough to exile him from his own community. The family settle at the edge of the forest, isolated, and already fractured. 

At first, everything seems to be going well... until the youngest child, baby Samuel, disappears. We are not left in doubt: a witch is the responsible. This narrative decisioni anchors the story firmly within the belief system of the time: witches were believed to require the fat of unbaptized infants to prepare flying ointments. 

From that moment on, calamity unfolds. Suspicion grows, and the family begins to turn inward, first against one another, and eventually against Thomasin, the eldest daughter. Puritan parenting was strict and disciplinary by design. Children were not viewed as innocent beings to be protected, but as morally dangerous souls in need of constant correction.

This burden fell disproportionately on eldest daughters. Thomasin is still a child, but she is treated like a grown woman. Expected to assist in raising younger siblings and manage domestic labor, Thomasin functions as a secondary caretaker while remaining under total authority. 

But we can see how Thomasin is independent in spirit, even as her life remains tightly constrained. She is innocent, but judged nevertheless. She survives the emotional violence inflicted by her own family with restraint and dignity, having already learned that resistance changes nothing. She follows the rules imposed, but never without interrogating them internally. 

There is something quietly Luciferian in her disposition.

Her family senses this long before they articulate it. When panic takes hold, Thomasin becomes the obvious scapegoat. She is not only accused of witchcraft, but gradually blamed for every misfortune. 

The story goes deeper into distrust and paranoia. 

Patriarchy as a Source of Horror

We all agree The VVitch is a feminist film that explains how religion is used by the patriarchy to control women.

Colonists in 17th-century New England lived under immense pressure. Isolation, scarcity, religious paranoia, and the hostility of the natural world created a constant state of existential stress. The film captures this brilliantly. The early settlers are simply not equipped to deal successfully with the world they have chosen. Their faith promises mastery and divine favor, yet reality continuously proves them wrong. 

The father's impotence is revealing. William, the de facto head of the family, is a stubborn man, unable to hunt and an awful farmer - a man not very good at providing for his family. Instead of adapting, he doubles down on control, opening all the wrong doors: spiritual, moral, and practical. He wants to conquer Mother Nature thought will, only to be systematically humbled by the elements.

The mother's descent is equally interesting and devastating. Already shattered by the disappearance of her baby, she turns her grief into resentment. Thomasin becomes the focus of those emotions, not only because she is blamed, but because she represents what the mother is losing. Youth. Fertility. Relevance. In a brutal, unspoken economy of survival, Thomasin is now considered more useful and more desirable. The mother knows it long before she admits it.

The three siblings mirror this dynamic in subtler but telling ways. They do not see Thomasin as a sister so much as an extension of the household’s labor. She is expected to serve, and to remain invisible while being constantly useful. The twins, particularly, treat Thomasin with deliberate hostility. Their behavior toward her is mocking, cruel, and destabilizing. What might appear childish on the surface is, in fact, a form of bullying: they learn quickly who can be targeted without consequence.

I like how The Witch builds on all those moments that show us how our "loved ones" can push us over the precipice. They know the pressure points and they know how to press them in ways that inflict the maximum pain and the deepest damage. 

What dost thou want? 

Spoiler alert. 

In the story, Lucifer and his partners take several forms: a goat - the cherry on top of this whole movie -, a raven, a hare, a beautiful woman with a rich red cape, the disfigured crone. Perfect figures that foreshadow what's going on and what will happen.

Thomasin is the victim of every else's sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, and pride. As a result, the family falls from grace, loses its means of survival, descends into hallucination and religious hysteria, and ultimately dies. 

Cornered, Thomasin is presented with an offer she can't refuse. She may join the devil and his coven of witches to live a delicious life of luxury, embracing freedom and leaving the harsh conditions of her miserable and isolated existence; she may die alone in the forest and she may go back to Puritan society to be hanged.

Some will argue that Thomasin simply accepted the only option left to her. The pact is an act of desperation rather than desire.

But this interpretation overlooks something essential: Thomasin’s life was already on a trajectory toward disaster long before the supernatural events began. Her fate was sealed by a system that had no place for her independence, her curiosity, or her emerging autonomy, a very female centric nightmare. 

Thomasin is a relatable figure to witches raised. The demented events have made her exhausted enough to make the decision to turn against religion - she was a good girl and never received help, lost in the dark as a result. When your God refuses to listen to your prayers and seems to have a personal vendetta against you, what's the point in continuing to place your faith in him? 

Lucifer is more of a liberator than anything else.

Being offered luxury, spiritual power, and self-sovereignty is a hard thing to pass up in any era. Does she want to "live deliciously"? Oh yes.

Lucifer didn't corrupt the girl, he brought his own shred of light into her life. 

Lucifer’s representation is one of the film’s most satisfying choices. He appears as an alluring and refined figure - a handsome and captivating man, with exquisite manners. His regal, smooth voice is like silk. There are no flames, horrible red-hued creatures with horns or monstrous contortions, just poise. 

His elegance feels deliberate in contrast with the dull, pale, black-and-white austerity of early New England. The austerity of Puritan fashion was ideological: color and ornamentation were associated with vanity and temptation. Muted colors signaled humility, and submission to divine authority. 

Lucifer’s carefully tailored presence highlights just how aggressively anti-human Puritan aesthetics were. Seen in this light, portraying Lucifer as ornamental is coherent, almost inevitable. Rather than making him appear excessive, the film renders the surrounding world cruel, joyless, and grotesquely unnatural. 

This is also why his aesthetic feels so recognizably Luciferian. We don't romanticize scarcity or elevate suffering as a moral achievement.

The moment in which Thomasin accepts his offer is handled with remarkable precision. It suggests a director who understands what a pact with Lucifer actually represents. It reveals Robert Eggers as an unusually intelligent storyteller.

In this scene, Lucifer’s presence is felt long before it is explained. The air changes. The world seems to pause. 

Wouldst thou like the taste of butter?