20 best film witches of all time
Häxan
Made in 1922, Häxan is the oldest of the films on this list. Don’t let its age deter you, however. This silent movie is both an important historic film and a simultaneously interesting and creepy entry into the horror canon.
This Swedish-Danish production was based in part on a real book, the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th-century German tome used by inquisitors in witchcraft trials. Thought the authors of the Malleus truly believed that witchcraft was a real world evil, writer and director Benjamin Christensen was far more skeptical.
Christensen’s film focuses more on the folklore and mythology of witchcraft. The first part of Häxan begins with a kind of dissertation on folkloric demons and spell workers. The film then moves on to recreations of medieval beliefs concerning witchcraft.
Here, filmgoers witness black masses and witches flying through the air, visions of which surely occupied the thoughts of inquisitors and townsfolk alike. It also makes for some disturbing and titillating sequences. One wonders if Christensen and his fellow filmmakers, for all their skepticism, didn’t enjoy this section at least a little bit.
Part 3, however, delves into the socioeconomic realities of witchcraft accusations. Funny, isn’t it, how witches were often defenseless old women? More interesting, says Christensen, is how so many of those lurid confessions of witchcraft and devil worship were extracted after long, arduous torture sessions.
The final act of Häxan brings audiences back to the real world, with possible explanations for all of the previous centuries’ witchcraft mania. Some psychological ills, such as sleepwalking and kleptomania, could have been seen as demonically influenced in earlier times.