Tag Archives: Witches

‘Tis the Season

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In discussing a genre such as horror, there are endless discussions of whether or not a given work should be included. Is something a thriller or a horror movie (can it be both)? Can it be horror if it isn’t scary (I’d say yes)? Can it be horror if there’s no element of the supernatural (of course)? These conversations often feel like pointless hairsplitting at best and mean-spirited gatekeeping at worst, but they also feel inevitable (I’ve spent at least one post going down that rabbit hole myself) – how can you really talk about something in any meaningful way if you can’t even agree on what it is?

But sometimes, it’s quite clear: the film was directed by one of horror’s most influential directors; it has both scenes of squirm inducing discomfort and sequences of stalking, home invasion, and assault; and it revolves around one of the all-time most classic “monsters” – witches. Very obviously, the film in question is not a horror film. More of a domestic drama. But one which I think a fan of the genre is well served by considering.

All of this is to say that this week, we’ll be looking at George Romero’s 1973 low-budget, feminist, occult drama, The Season of the Witch. As usual, there will be spoilers, so be forewarned.

The Season of the Witch (1973)

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is about this movie that I like so much. As described above, it is a real stretch to consider it horror (more of a drama with intimations of the occult). Furthermore, while I absolutely appreciate the film’s socio-political position, it is more than a little on the nose, with what it lacks in subtlety made up for by being really, really blatant. On top of that, it’s fairly slow and not all that much actually happens, and while some performers stand out, it is clearly peopled by the regional talent that Romero had easy access to in Pittsburgh (nothing against “the city of bridges,” but some of these players would not have gone far in NYC or Hollywood). Finally, it was riddled with production issues, with the producers more than halving the budget and chopping Romero’s original cut down by more than 40 minutes (and tossing the negatives, such that most of that is fully lost). And yet, somehow, the result feels so idiosyncratic, independent, deeply watchable, and rather moving. It is not Romero’s best work, but one can easily see him in it, and I have enjoyed revisiting it from time to time over the years.

Originally titled Jack’s Wife, this is a story of a woman trapped by her role – mother, wife, homemaker. The original title suggested how utterly she is discounted by the world around her – not a person, but a relationship, a possession. The distributer felt that name wasn’t going to sell tickets and retitled it Hungry Wives!, marketing it as a softcore sex film. The fact that there is very little sex shown and none of it is remotely explicit meant that the target audience left cinemas pretty unsatisfied. Eventually, it was re-released as The Season of the Witch (after the Donovan song that plays in a key sequence), meaning that now many horror fans would leave unsatisfied, but some, such as myself, have found it to be a lovely, little gem.

Joan (Jan White) is the stay-at-home mother of an adult daughter. Her husband is out of town on business more than he is home. She has no vocation and no one really needs her to do very much. She spends much of her time idly drinking, gossiping, or playing cards with the other neighborhood wives (who are, to be fair, a real hoot!), but the whole time, however done up her hair is, or how perfectly she keeps her home, she seems distant, clearly unengaged, unfulfilled, with a  gentle smile that never reaches her eyes. I wrote above that the film lacks subtlety, but White deserves credit for bringing genuine nuance to so much of her screen time. She communicates a great deal with very little and it is easy to immediately feel for her.

The film opens with a long dream sequence in which she follows behind her husband in the woods as he reads the paper, drinks tea, and eats breakfast, all the while leaving branches to whip her in the face, before he finally puts a collar around her neck, leashes her, and leads her into a kennel where he gives instruction for her care during the week he’ll be away for work. As I’ve said – not exactly subtle, but it is an effective, odd opening. Throughout the film, we spend a lot of time in her dreams, frequently unsure whether an event is real or imagined. We inhabit the space of her anxieties and dissatisfaction; the things she desires seemingly inexorably tied to those she fears: the violation of her home/cage, a threatening, magnetic male presence, and a dangerous, disruptive wild, dark power.  

Through a friend of a friend, she encounters some materials on witchcraft and, her husband out of town and her daughter having run away from home (more on that later), she begins to explore the dark arts, edging closer and closer to reckoning with and owning her own will, and acting to have it done. Along the way, she has a fling with a younger man (an irritatingly trollish, but charismatic guy who had been intermittently seeing her daughter), burns a lot of incense, summons a devil (or maybe just lets a cat into her basement), and (accidentally?) shoots her husband. In the end, we see Joan again at a neighborhood party, but now her reserve, similar to that shown at the beginning, clearly implies a self-satisfaction that makes her the center of attention (even if she is still labeled in the final line of the movie as “You know, Jack’s wife”).

On the horror movie of it all, as Romero does again in his later film Martin (1978), it is never clear whether anything supernatural has actually happened or not. In Martin that question is central to the story and the horror – either the protagonist is a tragic vampire or he is a dangerous psychopath – the ambiguity is key. In this case, however, the film doesn’t concern itself with even questioning whether or not Joan’s magic has any effect. Perhaps Greg comes to her because she cast a spell under moonlight, or maybe he comes because she called him on the phone – in a way it doesn’t matter as much as simply seeing her ask for his presence (to the spirits or via technological means) – seeing her become a willful agent. But still, that uncertainty does add a taste of mystery to the proceedings that brings it somewhat closer to a horror film.

And of course, Joan’s plight is a horrific one – and all the more so for how unnotable it is. Suffering from what Betty Friedan termed “the problem that has no name” in her 1963 text, The Feminine Mystique, Joan finds herself in an empty existence, fulfilling the roles that had been set out for her (and the rest of her neighborhood housewife coterie), surrounded by the creature comforts promised by 50s era Madison Avenue and women’s magazines that glamorized homemaking and helped lure women back out of the workforce after the war. At one point, she has a dream in which she is being shown the house by some sort of agent, and it feels as if she is both being given a nigh endless list of “nice things” and being bound to a dreary responsibility, tied to this building and these objects; the scene is a bit funny, but also haunting.

There is an interesting contrast to be had with her daughter Nikki (Joedda McClain). As a young woman in the sexual revolution of the early 1970s, she has a totally different relationship to sex, relationships, independence, and willfulness than her mother. It’s not clear exactly how old she is, but it’s implied that she’s in college, such that she is in a casual relationship with Greg, an aggressively superior, yet smarmily charming student-teacher there. Still, for all of her freedom and steady self-confidence, she is treated by both her parents and society as a kind of a child. Following a falling out, she leaves home and is considered a runaway, the police called in to search for her. I can only assume that this wouldn’t have happened had she been a 20 year old boy.

The most striking scene in the film features this mother-daughter relationship. After accompanying her friend, Shirley, to visit a “witch” for a tarot card reading, the two of them end up back at Joan’s where Nikki and Greg are hanging out. In an increasingly uncomfortable episode, the four of them drink together, and Greg needles the older women, especially Shirley, targeting her insecurities of growing old, of being undesirable, attacking the hangups that stop her from doing whatever she wants and suggesting that sad, repressed people like her are ‘what’s wrong with this country.’ Nikki apologetically makes half-hearted attempts to reign him in and Joan makes some effort to cut him down for his cruelty, but at the same time, there seems to be a spark between them – antagonistic, but intriguing. Ultimately, she is complicit in Greg’s tricking Shirley into thinking that she’s just tried pot (it’s just a normal cigarette) as he proves a point about the susceptibility and power of the mind and viciously pushes Shirley to an emotional breaking point to reveal just how unhappy she actually is beneath her veneer of happy, square, middle-class housewifery. I mean, he’s not wrong, but he’s also a mean prick.

After driving Shirley home, Joan returns to find that the young couple is still there, sounds of laughter and sexual pleasure coming from her daughter’s room. Visibly unsure what to do, Joan creeps down the hall to her own room and closes the door, but she can still hear them. She buries her head in the pillows, but can’t block them out and is soon physically turned on herself, and disturbed by that fact. But is she so upset because it feels wrong to be so aroused by hearing her daughter’s moans or because she is jealous of a pleasure and a freedom that feel completely lost to her?  She ends in tears shortly before Nikki bursts in, disgusted to realize that her mother had been listening the whole time. This is what prompts her to “run away.”

In the next scene, her husband is furious with her and even strikes her for doing nothing, for not stopping their daughter from “being balled in the next room,” for somehow failing as a mother in letting this 20-something young woman leave home. Notably, Joan is not worried about Nikki at this point – not really. She doesn’t explicitly say this, but Nikki is a confident and self-sufficient adult who can make her own decisions and deal with her own mistakes (something Joan, in contrast, has trouble doing). Rather, Joan is worried about herself – what she wants, what she no longer has the ability to put up with. Soon after, on a Donovan groove, she heads into the city, buys a chalice, a knife, and some herbs, and starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards before bed.

She also starts dreaming about a masked intruder breaking into her house and attacking her (in sequences that could have found a place in a more traditional horror movie). Does this dream figure represent the threat and attraction she feels from and towards Greg, the danger of her own unchecked desire running wild, the risk of tampering with dark, occult forces, or just a dangerous maleness, as much her husband as patriarchal society writ large? Later, as these dreams blur into reality, all of these possible interpretations will come to a bloody head.

In recent years, I’ve heard many female led horror films described as “good-for-her” films. Whether Thomasin in The VVitch, Dani in Midsommar, or Dawn in Teeth, there is often a specific and characteristic satisfaction to seeing some woman or girl, whom we have seen marginalized by the people in her life, if not society in general, rising up and taking her place of strength, even if that means engaging in bloody acts. Even if they end up complicit in murder, if not murderers themselves, it’s hard not to nod with a kind of bloody minded approval and think, “good for her.” Romero’s Joan is decades ahead of this curve, shooting her husband in the final reel (possibly accidentally, thinking him the dream intruder, possibly not), this act and its immediate aftermath intercut with her initiation into the local coven of witches.

In that ceremony, a rope is looped around her neck and she is led to kneel, echoing her kennel dream at the opening of the film. Does this suggest that she has just traded one cage for another? I’m not sure why, but in choosing this binding for herself, it doesn’t feel that way. As the film ends, she seems so much more alive. In its bundle of will, magic, the power of the mind, desire, and the mysteries of attraction, Romero’s film presents this woman coming into her own, coming to life, and it is an engaging and touching journey.

While only nominally a horror movie and not the strongest piece in his catalogue, this artifact of early Romero (his third film, after Night of the Living Dead and a romantic comedy I haven’t seen called There’s Always Vanilla) pairs interestingly with both The Amusement Park (also 1973), a recently resurfaced public service short he made about the horrific way the elderly are discarded, and the abovementioned, excellent Martin (also, I assume it must be a direct influence on the rather enjoyable Jakob’s Wife (2021), a story of a dissatisfied housewife getting her groove back after being bitten by a vampire – I wrote a short bit about it here). There could be a valid discussion of how much Romero succeeds or not in engaging with difficulties that were clearly not his own lived experience, but he does so with earnestness and real heart, while bringing some cinematic flair to this grainy, bleak setting. People complain sometimes these days about horror “being too political,” about “virtue signaling” trumping storytelling. Those people should avoid this film – they would hate it. But if you can give it the time, if you can make some allowances, you may find The Season of the Witch the small delight that I do.

Suspiria:  Cinematic Pleasure, Candy Colored Joy

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Following last week’s look at Argento’s output in the eighties, I felt like staying on this train and finally tackling what might be considered his opus, Suspiria (of course, others will argue the point, but that’s what I suppose the internet is for).  Regardless of whether or not it’s his best work (and it very well may be), it is easily his most iconic and recognizable. It was the first of his films that I saw and it surely made an impression (I also expect it was my first Italian horror film way back when, and thus my first exposure to some of the typical traits thereof, such as the characteristic dubbing).

And yet, for all that it holds a place of honor among fans and critics, I think there is sometimes a kind of snooty gatekeeping reaction against it. “Oh sure, you like Suspiria. But everyone’s seen that; you can’t really call yourself a serious horror fan until you can comment incisively on Jenifer (an Argento-directed episode of the anthology TV show, Masters of Horror) and the collected works of Umberto Lenzi, Bruno Mattei, and Joe D’Amato.” Additionally, given the divisive nature of its 2018 remake (which I really love and have written about here), I think many fans of Guadagnino’s film (criticized by some for how it differs from the original), have thus taken a defensive posture against the original, or at least, have cooled on it. While I understand that emotional response, I’d encourage anyone in that camp to revisit Argento’s film. Having re-watched it a couple of times recently for this post, I can attest that it holds up as a very special movie and is worth watching with fresh eyes. So, let’s get into it…

Suspiria (1977)

I may not watch it so often, but every time I do, I get immediately excited. The opening scene is just such a thrill (in which not much really happens, but the way it doesn’t happen is so cinematic and magical). Our main character, Suzy, arrives at an airport in Germany late at night, and it is immediately the most gorgeously shot airport I’ve ever seen (not a gorgeous airport mind you, but gorgeously shot). As she walks towards the exit, every time the automatic doors open, a storm rages outside and the musical theme creeps in, only to cut out the second the doors have closed.

It’s as if she’s in this liminal space of travel, still between worlds, still protected within its walls, but outdoors, a gale of menacing supernatural force howls. Finally outside, buffeted by the wind and the rain, she eventually succeeds at hailing a taxi and has a hilarious interaction with the driver, familiar to anyone who’s spent much time abroad – she says the street she’s going to multiple times and he just shrugs, not understanding and not caring; finally she shows him the address and he goes “Ah, Escherstraße,” pronouncing it, to my ears, identically to how she had been saying it, and starts to drive. Now moving, her face is bathed in ever changing colored lights. It’s not realistic – I don’t think she would be lit this way by actual florescent signs and streetlights, but it feels real while it is happening and this disorienting chromatic play beautifully situates her as a small, wet, fragile being alone in a very foreign, incomprehensible, and unforgiving land.

When the taxi pulls up at her destination (the dance academy at which she has come to study), the deep red and gold building looms like a monster above her and the rain comes down in buckets, highlighted by an improbably bright light, just out of view. She sees a girl shouting in the doorway and running off into the night, but is denied entry herself by the voice on the intercom and has to return to the impatient driver to be taken to a hotel for the night.

In the car, she catches a glimpse of that girl, terrified, running through the woods from some unknown threat. We then follow that girl into a shockingly gorgeous art deco interior where she will shortly be murdered in the next scene (and that murder will of course be a visual spectacle – gory, scary, and stunningly composed, every rich streak of blood in its place).

I’m not going to describe every frame of the movie, though almost every shot could be framed, so consciously and artfully has it been crafted, but I wanted to give some sense of how strong it starts, of its atmosphere of overwhelming audio-visual elation.

Sometimes Suspiria is dismissed as style over substance, as that colorful movie, as an exercise in empty visual excess, but at the end of the day, what is the medium of cinema? It’s just light, brighter or darker, in different hues, accompanied by sound; thus, I think it short sighted to discount work which gives so much attention, so much care to exactly those elements, lovingly, joyfully, successfully crafting a sensory experience unlike any other (which still delivers other cinematic value as well) simply because the story is simple.

Suspiria is basically a fairy tale. A young girl (Suzy Bannion) goes to a mysterious dance academy in the middle of a dark forest. Everyone there is strange and standoffish, and the teachers are demanding. Struck by a light reflecting off a crystal in the hallway, Suzy falls sick and is forced to board at the school against her will while she recovers. Her diet is controlled and it’s implied that the wine is drugged or enchanted. There are odd disappearances and deaths; those who displease the instructors meet bad ends. Suzy feels compelled to investigate and comes to learn that they are a coven of witches, led by the often invisible old crone who is perhaps leeching some of the young students of life. Having killed the witch and broken her power, Suzy escapes the school as it burns, the other witches screaming within. Technically, these are spoilers, but in a fairy tale like this, I really don’t think it matters.

There are some absurdities along the way and things that just don’t make sense (it seems obligatory to ask why any dance academy, even one run by evil witches would keep a room filled with razor wire – also, in one scene the pianist who provides music for classes seems to be playing an orchestra – we see him at the piano, but we hear a string section and perhaps some woodwinds until he stops playing), but the simple story actually plays out with consistency, and serves as a structure to hold glorious images and spectacular sequences of dread, suspense, and optic extremity.

And the quality of those images really cannot be oversold. Leaning hard into the fairy tale of it all, Argento instructed the cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, to base the colors of the film on those of Disney’s Snow White, and utilized the same Technicolor film printing process that had been used on The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, thought outdated at that time (after printing Suspiria, the last Technicolor equipment in Italy was dismantled). Furthermore, Tivoli mostly eschewed typical colored gels, instead creating screens of colorful velvets and tissue paper which he used to paint the light, intending a greater tactile effect, which I feel he achieved. For more on Tivoli, I recommend this fascinating exploration of his work.

From moment to moment, especially exploring the luscious interiors of the academy, or the building where Pat is killed, my breath catches in my throat. There is really is something to the deeply saturated colors; this is as true of the crushed velvet on the walls as it is of the light coming through the stained glass in the ceiling, or of the bright red, paint-like blood trailing down a victim’s body. The whole film is a sensory delicacy, a delight.

And light and color are not the only sensory elements of significance. In this, their second collaboration with Argento, Goblin crafted an inimitable, dominating score. It features the synth-prog groove one would expect of them, but is also just really aggressive – sometimes discordant, sometimes jarring. Thus, it brings certain scenes to life, adding a sense of the arcane even to moments which lack other markers of danger – such as when Suzy speaks with two psychiatrists about witches (like you do) in a bright, modern, sunlit courtyard. Between the music and the camera’s ever shifting position, Suspiria never lets you forget you’re watching a horror film, even while listening to some doctors whose specialty seems to be expository dialogue.

But regarding that exposition (probably one of the least gripping aspects of the film), I do appreciate something about the lore. Inspired by a prose poem by Thomas De Quincey, describing an opium dream about three ‘mothers of sorrow,’ matching the three fates, or the three graces, the screenplay by Argento and his partner, Daria Nicolodi posits witches as powerful, menacing, and malicious, but doesn’t bring any typical Christian mythology into it. Satan’s never mentioned, nor is sin. I love when we can have supernatural threats that linger just beyond our understanding without having to buy into something that feels like an infomercial for the church. It is nice not to be plagued by religiosity in an occult horror film, but beyond that, I think it’s just more interesting, more evocative. This world has its own mythos and we catch only the smallest glimpse of it, letting it loom that much larger in the shadows. This will be satisfyingly expanded on in Inferno.

Even when it feels obvious that story beats have been crafted primarily to set up the next visual payoff, that payoff never disappoints, such as when the maggots falling from the ceiling (thanks to meat kept in the attic, which has spoiled, presumably due to its proximity to evil witches and not because it was being stored, unrefrigerated, in an attic) results in all the students and teachers having to sleep in a large dance studio, the boys, girls, and teachers divided by white sheets. The lights are turned off and suddenly, all of the screens are backlit in red and I go, “oooh, cool!” Behind Suzy and her new friend Sara, ghostly silhouettes flit across the screen, until one particularly decrepit figure beds down exactly behind them and starts to snore in a gasping, rattling, unsettling fashion.  Sara feverishly whispers to Suzy about how that must be the school’s true headmistress, said to be away. Nothing really happens here, but it is an intense scene, visually striking, and heightening the story’s sense of mystery and threat.

One other key to the film’s success which could not be overstated is the center provided by Jessica Harper, who plays Suzy. Apparently Argento had originally wanted the dancers to all be children no older than 12, but the producer (his father) was concerned that censors wouldn’t pass a film with such violence if it featured kids (the script, however was never changed, which explains some of the childish interactions of the clearly adult actresses – also, to maintain the feeling of children, all doorknobs on the set were placed at about Harper’s head level).

Slight of frame, with big, gently curious eyes, Harper brings a childlike quality to the role, without at all behaving immaturely. She instead carries an awareness, a self-assurance throughout as she questions the stern headmistress about the killings, interviews psychiatrists about witchcraft, or squares off against the ancient occultist behind the curtain. Her stature and costuming implies vulnerability and youth, but her character is willful, steady, and intelligent.

Furthermore, Harper plays every moment with a kind of quiet sincerity, lending credence to the sometimes wild turn of events around her. Sometimes characters don’t seem to realize that they are in a horror movie, but Suzy seems to from the first time that the airport doors slide open and the sounds of mysterious threat starts screaming at her through the pounding rain. She can’t hear the soundtrack, but it feels like she is properly unnerved by it nonetheless. Without her at the film’s core, the often mad, if beautiful, pageant of aesthetic horrors might really not hold together (a criticism that could be levied against Argento’s follow up, Inferno).

Finally, it would be an oversight not to give any attention to the violence of the film, which is also unique, stunning, and potent. As is often the case with Argento, it is in the kill scenes that his cinematic flair most comes to play. Pat’s face pressed through the window, the knife seen entering her still beating heart, her friend dead on the floor of this grand lobby, a pane of glass splitting her face, the blind pianist threatened in the wide open, empty town square in the middle of the night, fascistically imperial monuments on all sides, only to be attacked from a totally unexpected direction, Sara in the razor wire, before the blade is pulled, graphically across her flesh, Markos with the crystal peacock feather pressed through her rotting neck; each kill is preceded by a sustained, tense game of teasing suspense and shock, and with few exceptions, each death is seductively beautiful.

Even in its brutality, the violence of the film is artful. I feel like each drop of blood, each pin in an eye, each shard of glass piercing the skin has been placed with great care, balancing horror movie scares that can startle or disgust with visual compositions that the eye doesn’t want to look away from.

Are there moments that don’t work? Sure (a certain bat attack and fake dog mouth come to mind). Does my attention sometimes wander a bit until the next extraordinary visual or sequence is presented? Yeah, I’ll admit it. But for me, those things just don’t matter so much. It is a unique monster of a film, the product of a singular vision, and a tremendous success. Though the tale is one of murder and horrors, full of hostility and brutality and unsettling moments and gore, the total effect for me is one of delight, every frame filled with the obvious joy of artists making exactly the thing that most excited them, and doing it so very well.

It must also be said that I do dearly love Guadagnino’s 2018 remake as well. They are such very different films, but each revels in a kind of excess (Argento’s being a maximalist aesthetic trip and Guadagnino’s being so overfull with ideas and history and character), and each creates a space in which I love to dwell. I think in a case like this, they need not be in competition and a fan need not take sides. You can love all your kids, but maybe you love some of them in different ways.

CRAFTing Class Systems

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As we are here in the Halloween season, I thought I’d take a look at a perennial favorite which I like, which I saw multiple times at the dollar theatre back in the day, and which I’ve always had somewhat mixed feelings about.

The Craft (1996)

Andrew Fleming and Peter Filardi’s teen witch flick makes good use of a personable young cast and stands as a solid piece of mid-90s memorabilia, delivering the entertaining tale of a band of young female outcasts finding empowerment and friendship, mixed with a heavy dose of somewhat reactionary Hollywood tropes.  It also, in its style, soundtrack, and TV-teen drama-based-casting, presaged the late 90s slasher cycle which Scream would kick off only 7 months later.  It is very much a memento of a time and a place, and while that means that it is rich with nostalgic value, it has more than that going for it, even if some elements of its final act leave a bad taste in my mouth.

The story follows Sarah (Robin Tunney), a teen with past suicidal tendencies, who has just moved to a new town with her father and stepmother.  Her first day at school, she is both immediately interested in Chris (Skeet Ulrich), an alpha male, grabby handed, rumor spreading football dude, and a group of standoffish girls who she is warned to stay away from by some other popular types, told that they are ‘witches.’  Ignoring all advice, she befriends the three wannabe magic users, each of whom is a persona-non-grata in her own way.

Nancy (Fairuza Balk) is a goth kid who, despite the fact that she’s somehow going to a posh, private Catholic school, is dirt poor from an abusive home. Bonnie (Neve Campbell, in her first film role) is covered with burns over most of her body and is very withdrawn. Rochelle (Rachel True) endures racist bullying at school, largely from a pretty blonde girl on her swim team.  The three have been practicing witchcraft together, seeking strength in the face of the everyday cruelty they encounter, but we don’t see much evidence that they have been able to summon much in the way of aptitude in this domain.

It turns out that Sarah has always had real magic but has never understood or sought to harness it.  The three girls invite her to join them and complete their coven and soon, they’re casting love spells with dire consequences, cursing their enemies, and climbing out of poverty.  Finally, Nancy convinces them to try a more serious spell in search of more aggressive power tipping her over into full blown psycho territory and resulting in a string of corpses of some not terribly nice people (and some perfectly pleasant beached sharks).  Sarah tries to detach herself from the others, but they come after her, making it appear that her family has died in an accident and trying to push her to kill herself (more successfully than her previous attempt).  She taps into the natural power within, communes with the same ancient force powering Nancy, and triumphs, leaving Nancy institutionalized and the other two powerless.  She has risen to her full potency and self-confidence.

There is much to like here.  First off, no one has ever gone broke selling an empowering story of outsiders finding support and power in each other, and taking revenge on bullies. The interplay between the four leads is strong. It’s easy to buy into their friendship, just as it’s easy to sympathize with their plights.  Seeing glimpses of Nancy’s home life, Rochelle fielding racial slurs, or Bonnie undergoing painful skin treatments, desperate not to feel like a freak anymore, you want them to rise above all this. And as they first tap into actual magic, it is fun. It is thrilling.  It’s exciting to see power bestowed upon the powerless, and when they first start striking out at those who have wronged them, it’s hard to blame them. Similarly, at the end, when Sarah really finds her own power and pushes back against the others, it is easy to cheer her on as she becomes more self-assured—as she becomes herself.

Beyond that, there is a nice young energy, a soundtrack that summons a feeling of ‘96, some capably designed magic effects (notably, a nice bit when the shadows of some window ironwork transform into snakes—it holds up), and in all four of the leads, some enjoyable young performers who deliver the goods.  There are reasons that this mild success became a bit of a beloved cult classic, especially for those who saw in it a celebration of the freak-outsider overcoming the awful, boring, and cruel pettiness of the pretty, “normal” people.

But, something always felt off about the ending, and I think on re-watch, I might be able to clarify it.  So, it is not surprising that these girls, once they have power, start to abuse it, and that it goes to a dangerous place.  This is as standard a progression as any in the Western canon.  As viewers, we get pulled in with the charge of new power and the potential to strike out at hateful jerks, and then we are shown, by the end, the wicked path to which that inevitably leads.  But especially because the friendship between the four landed so well, it feels frustrating and disappointing when they so rapidly turn against each other and ‘go evil’ to serve the demands of the plot. The way the film suddenly paints these characters as villainous, who seem to finally be getting their due, feels like some kind of narrative betrayal akin to Allie Sheedy’s character at the end of The Breakfast Club trading in her black clad, idiosyncratic identity to put on a lot of pink girly bows and kiss a cute boy.

And there’s something larger at work in this particular story arc—probably unintended by the writers, but nonetheless present.  The three initial witches are all cast offs of society, with Nancy standing out in her poverty and domestic abuse.  They all live and operate in a world of wealth and privilege: an expensive looking private school in or near LA.  When these powerless figures get a taste of power, they use it violently, lashing out at their former oppressors.  The poor, the ugly, the black are new to having power and they can’t be trusted to use it responsibly. In their rage, they endanger the stability of a rich, white, misogynistic society, and therefore, must be quelled.

Sarah, on the other hand, her power stemming from her mother who had died giving birth to her, is old money.  (Not to mention that, based on her home and neighborhood, her family is, in fact, loaded)  She was born with her power—she didn’t have to take it from anywhere.  All she had to do was accept the position she had inherited and she could triumph over the other three, ultimately putting them all back in their place, fully chastised for daring to rise above their respective stations. Again, it’s doubtful the writers had any polemic in mind when penning this, but the final act does dampen any sense that the film is actually on the side of the disenfranchised.  It may sell itself that way on the surface, but in all actuality, it serves to reify the status quo of capital, position, race, and, um,  magic. All of this should be unsurprising, given the extent to which it is the product of big, entrenched business, in the form of a Hollywood movie studio (Columbia). But still, it does feel like a let-down.

All of that said, it is still a rather enjoyable watch.  The camaraderie and the initial wish fulfillment fantasy both offer real pleasures.  The story, if somewhat predictable and socio-politically regressive, plays out engagingly. Finally, even if the ending disappoints, it is played well.  The final confrontation looks cool, is exciting, and, in Fairuza Balk’s Nancy, features a great, crazy, unhinged performance.  Much about this does still play well and rewards repeat viewing, but, may require overlooking a bit of an astringent aftertaste.