Ambiguity should not only be used sparingly, it should be used in a way that allows for plausible and fruitful alternative interpretations (like "Does the top fall or keep spinning?" in
Inception). But this presupposes that the filmmaker/s know/s everything unambiguously and have carefully orchestrated the ambiguity. Just ending a movie with a hands-up "Who knows?" ending as if that's not a massive cop-out drives me insane.
The whole point of
Psycho is to find out WTF is going on and why, the whole point of
Rosemary's Baby is to find out what happened with her baby, the whole point of
The Omen is to find out if the kid is really evil or not, the whole point of
Scream is to find out who's under the mask, etc. Then when you get into the Blair Witch era, you get filmmakers defaulting on their endings as if it's artistically valid to just not explain shit. If the material calls for it, and if you can do it elegantly, then okay, go the ambiguity route. Look at
The Shining or
The Thing. Those are fantastic endings that work perfectly given what'd come before. But in both instances, there are clear avenues for interpretation open with pieces of corroborating evidence readily available in the preceding. In neither case are we left trying to tie up the loose ends left by the lazy/incompetent filmmakers.
That's what really grinds my gears.
Good to know coz I was planning on doing the same, only just haven't gotten around to it. I won't bother now.
Well, I wouldn't recommend going by me. You seem to have enjoyed
Hereditary more than I did. And you made mention of a "Gothic" touch and
The Witch is set in the past and has a very old-timey horror feel to it. For all I know, you'll love
The Witch.
Even though I didn't like it, I'd hate to rob someone of a positive moviegoing experience, so I'd still recommend giving it a shot.
My guess is the creepiest scene was when she was playing peek a boo with the baby and the baby disappeared. That stuck with me from the original trailer when it first came out. Its always annoying to see a film where you already saw the best scene....
I actually didn't find that scene creepy at all. Nothing happens. That's not creepy. The creepiest scenes are the ones that actually have to do with the witch. Personally, I thought even those were lame and trite, but they're definitely better than that early peek-a-boo scene.
I think The Witch is a great film. Better than this one. Firstly, Anya Taylor-Joy is just magnetic as Tomasin, really playing up the frustration, earnestness, and vulnerabilities of her role. And Ralph Ineson as the father is great as well.
I think
Hereditary is the better film but
The Witch definitely wins on the acting front. I don't think the girl was anything special but the mom and dad were both solid.
The Witch is a film about a bunch of characters whose world-view makes them implode. Critically, the film itself operates after their puritan mindset. The film is basically about playing out its implications to their logical endpoints.
The family leaves society because they want to be pure of sin, but their paranoia about impurity turns them against each other, and leaves them into sinning as well. They hold the opinion that any sin is a grievous deviancy. They must be pure from sin but the film is basically about that such a mindset is not only fundamentally impossible but also self-destructive.
I'm torn here. I want to agree with this analysis, because it seems to match the proceedings perfectly, and yet, I'm reluctant to give the film credit as a critique. I think that you can map this onto the film and point up the self-destructive illogic of the family's actions (certainly the father's, though the rest of your analysis of the other family members seems on-point, as well), but I don't know that doing so is what the film's
about or what they were
trying to do with it. Does that make sense?
Assuming that it does and that you know what I'm asking, what from within the film leads you to believe that the religious shit was more than just "window dressing" and that we were supposed to understand the film as and walk away from it with a critique of Puritanism/religious dogmatism? Wouldn't this mean that the witches were forces of
good, that they weren't "evil" at all? But that wouldn't make sense, because they're killing/eating babies and shit. Where does that leave us with the concepts of "good" and "evil" - or, more specifically, where does the film want to leave us with those concepts?
In short, I think that your analytical sharpness is sharpening the edges of what was actually a much duller film. I'm open to being proven wrong about that, though.
I don't remember if Tomasin ever actually did anything sinful (until she sold her soul to the devil) but merely being accused of it is enough to damn her in such a paranoid and sexist society, especially being a girl on the cusp of womanhood.
This is the only part of your analysis that I'd want to apply pressure to. I think that, on your reading, you're making Tomasin a lot more of an "innocent" than she actually was. At least, that's according to the film. For example, why was the baby snatched when it was with her? Why was that egg all fucked up when she touched it? Why did she milk blood from the goat? It seemed like the film was trying to indicate that she had evil in her. On your reading, it makes sense to argue that the family - the father with his pride, the mother with her wrath, the kids with their consorting with the devil - is
lead into sin, but Tomasin, who seems the very picture of innocence on your reading, appears in the film to be the only one
born into sin - indeed, who seems
evil.
Or am I missing something with her?
I just assumed that I must have missed something that the SMC would uncover. I guess it was just bad planning on the filmmakers part.
Certainly seems that way. I guess nobody bothered to look up
Chekov's gun.
I remember thinking Omen II was good (can't remember much about them though since it was like 15 years since I saw them). I just remember thinking it was a classic case of very diminishing returns.
I'd say the relationship between
The Omen and
Omen II is closer to
Scream and
Scream 2 - two awesome movies where the sequel not being as good as the original is more of a complement to the original than a knock on the sequel - than it is to
Halloween and
Halloween II.
Then again, I, like you, haven't seen them in a number of years, so I have no idea what I'd think now. Going off of memory, though, I've always loved them both.
Yeah, that's just my take. I think it's corroborated by the fact that they actually summoned Paimon, though
I'm a stickler, though, so it's a big deal to me whether she intended (and ensured somehow?) the seance to summon Paimon and the Charlie shit was a lie (but then how did and what's the significance that Charlie "got in" Annie?) or whether she intended the seance to summon Charlie and her ending up "in" Annie was some sort of glitch (how/what's the significance of that?) or whether she intended the seance to summon Charlie and Paimon was either already "there" (where is "there" and how/when did he get there?) or had nothing to do with anything in that scene.
