See the introduction and full slate here.
This week, evil seduces and repels as David Fincher’s 1995 hit Se7en:
Battles Robert Eggers’ 2015 directorial debut *The Witch*:Religious horror films are a more diverse group than you might think; the villains are differently motivated and the horror is presented differently depending on the point of view of the film. Yet they all present evil as a concrete, identifiable force in the world; something that might be conquered or might not, something that should be fought or shouldn’t, but is undeniably out there and out to get us.
John Doe, played by Kevin Spacey in Se7en, is probably not the literal devil - although the possibility is raised by another character. He has no supernatural skills, other than an odd ability to keep track of and predict people’s moral inadequacies. Yet there is something not quite human about him; he has no name, no history, no desires, and no fingerprints. He seems to have coalesced out of the swirling mass of selfishness and depravity that infects the city in which he emerges. He arrives out of nowhere, meticulously plans and carries out tortures and murders, and then happily allows himself to be killed.
The evil in The Witch is just as solidly felt, and just as murky in its origin. A family leaves England for North America; they leave their settlement for a house in the woods, far away from any other people, and they find there’s something in the woods that means them harm. A baby vanishes, milk goes bad, domesticated animals turn violent. The nature of the threat is unclear until the end, when the film makes an unambiguous statement: witches are real, so is the devil, and they’re in the woods, killing families for their own purposes.
Whether evil is Satan, or many anonymous devils, or a corruption in the hearts of men, it is real, and out there. Both of these films acknowledge that.
So which one is better?
I’ve always been unnerved by Kevin Spacey. His early roles lean into that uncanny quality, and none more so than Se7en. He’s certainly scary, almost otherworldly in this film, and though he was not as famous then as he is now, I don’t know that a reveal of another actor as the murderer would have worked as well. Spacey just seems like he’s into some weird shit, you know?
But then, nothing in Se7en seems normal. Everything is at once heightened or coldly clinical; this would, of course, come to be David Fincher’s trademark. The Witch on the other hand is, though artfully done, mundane. There are no movie stars, though Anya Taylor-Joy is still young enough (and talented enough) that she may be one later. The sets are spare, either natural or apparently handmade, as befits a story set in 17th century New England. Nobody has a costume change. Everything is dirty. Though there is more supernatural horror in The Witch than in Se7en, The Witch feels more like real life.
It strains credulity that John Doe would be able to pull off a series of murders quite like the ones he commits in Se7en. However, we know from history the hysterical fear that can take hold of small communities. The Witch is based on historical records, and is evidently meant to act as a sort of fictional prequel to the real Salem witch trials. Everything that happens in the story, until the very end, could really happen. We are never quite sure, until the very end, whether these characters are insane or truly haunted. There is more to shock in Se7en, but more to be frightened of in The Witch. Similarly, there is more to seduce. When Thomasin finally speaks to Black Phillip, surrounded by the corpses of her family, his offer to her is genuinely tempting, and all the more frightening because the audience cannot at that point find a reason for her to reject it. Her encounter with the coven of witches that closes the film is as joyous as it is disturbing. Evil wins in The Witch, and what's more, we like seeing it win.
Se7en is an older, more popular film, but as pure horror, The Witch gets it.