{"id":38735,"date":"2021-10-25T16:13:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T16:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=38735"},"modified":"2021-10-25T16:21:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T16:21:07","slug":"spooky-season-witch-films","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/spooky-season-witch-films\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Spellbindingly Stylish Films About Witches To Watch This Spooky Season"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tilda
Tilda Swinton in Suspiria<\/i> (Photo: Alessio Bolzoni\/Amazon Studios)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It has recently come to my attention that \u201cSpooky Season\u201d is now a thing. Apparently, this is what we\u2019re calling the weeks leading up to Halloween<\/a>, when we\u2019re all supposed to binge candy corn and late-night horror flicks. But I\u2019ve always thought of October as the season of the witch. (Hat-tip to Donovan<\/a>.) As the leaves begin to fall and jack-o\u2019-lanterns begin to appear on doorsteps, I\u2019m inclined to brew a pot of spiked apple cider\u2014or a stiff martini\u2014and settle in for a marathon of witchy films to get in the mood for All Hallows\u2019 Eve.<\/p>\n

The advantage to this approach, of course, is that movies about witches come in a variety of different tones and genres. You want romance? Comedy? Camp? Horror? There\u2019s a witchy movie out there for each. And they tend to be stylish experiences, inventive in both their approach to the themes of magic and their depictions of powerful supernatural women. Here are five all-time faves.<\/p>\n

\"Sandra
Sandra Bullock and Nichole Kidman in Practical Magic<\/i> (Image: courtesy of Warner Bros.\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Practical Magic<\/strong>
\nFor better or worse, this 1998 film is basically the celluloid equivalent of a pumpkin spice latte. It\u2019s silly, sentimental, a little corny, but it\u2019s pretty and it feels seasonally appropriate, not just because it\u2019s about a couple of witches, but also because it\u2019s got that chunky sweater, autumn in New England feel. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman<\/a> star as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens who, despite their earth mama\/sex goddess magic, both suffer from romantic tribulations that can be traced back to an old family curse. The tremendous Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest play the sisters\u2019 delightfully batty aunts whose caftans, scarves, parasols, Nancy-Meyers-by-way-of-Morgan-le-Fay kitchen and general disdain for conventionality are all ironclad #witchgoals. If you want a comforting dose of romantic charm in your spooky season viewing, you could do a lot worse than Practical Magic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Clockwise
Clockwise from top: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher (Photo by RDB\/ullstein bild via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Witches of Eastwick<\/strong>
\nI could go on for days about the differences between this 1987 film and John Updike\u2019s 1984 novel\u2014a personal problematic fave<\/a>. But despite dialing back the novel\u2019s more explicit witchcraft, among other significant changes, director George Miller\u2019s adaptation is still a perennial delight, thanks primarily to its superstar cast. Cher<\/a>, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer star as a trio of single girlfriends who manage to unwittingly summon a dark stranger, Jack Nicholson\u2019s Daryl Van Horne, to their small New England town. Each woman has her own unique talents and troubles which Daryl, who may or may not be the devil himself, helps them master\u2014mostly by sleeping with them.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the film takes Updike\u2019s snide satire of feminism and turns it on its head slightly. Via Nicholson\u2019s virtuosic scene stealing we get a phantasmagoric spoof of a particular breed of misogynist: the kind of guy who puts women on a pedestal only to reveal his operatic resentment when they disappoint him.<\/p>\n

\"Samantha
Samantha Robinson in The Love Witch<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Love Witch<\/strong>
\nDirector Anna Biller\u2019s dazzling 2016 indie is an homage to 1960s B-movies and Age of Aquarius-era occultism. The aesthetic is high camp, all saturated colors and purposefully anachronistic style. But amid all the witchy trappings\u2014spell casting and naked rituals in the woods\u2014there\u2019s a clever examination of gender roles. Elaine (Samantha Robinson), the beautiful young Wiccan at the center of the film, is desperate to be loved by men and devotes all of her abilities, both as a witch and as a woman, to attracting and pleasing them. And the results are tragic. Biller\u2019s gaze is resolutely feminine; the artificiality of the film\u2019s production design mirrors the artifice of Elaine\u2019s feminine self-presentations\u2014her aqua eye shadow, her immaculately lacquered nails, her cascading ink black wig. The Love Witch<\/em> may look like a candy-coated bag of tricks and treats, but there\u2019s real substance to this potent brew.<\/p>\n

\"Anya
Anya Taylor-Joy in The Witch<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Witch<\/strong>
\nTeen witches, love witches, campy witches; sexy sorceresses and earthy wise women; witchcraft as empowerment, magic as a superpower. That\u2019s all fun, but Robert Eggers\u2019s 2015 horror film takes us back to a time when witchcraft meant real terror. In The Witch<\/em>, it\u2019s the 1630s and a family of Puritan settlers has been cast out of their New England colony to fend for themselves in the wilderness. Soon after establishing a small farm at the edge of a dark, untamed forest, tragedy strikes when the youngest member of the family, baby Samuel, disappears. Fear soon sets in, as patriarch William (Ralph Ineson) begins to suspect eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy<\/a> in her first film role) of witchcraft.<\/p>\n

Eggers\u2019s film is a masterclass in ambient dread. Unlike The Crucible<\/em>, which also used Puritan witchcraft superstitions as a metaphor for paranoia, the witch here is real. But the film\u2019s terror comes from its bleak atmosphere, its sense of isolation and the severity of William\u2019s loveless, unforgiving theology as much as from its disturbing imagery. Still, I defy anyone who says The Witch <\/em>doesn\u2019t have a happy ending!<\/p>\n

\"Dakota
Dakota Johnson (center) in Suspiria<\/i> (Photo: Alessio Bolzoni\/courtesy of Amazon Studios)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Suspiria (2018)<\/strong>
\nI fully accept that it is a controversial move to include Luca Guadagnino\u2019s 2018 remake and not<\/em> the 1977 original directed by Dario Argento, the master of Italian horror. Argento\u2019s film is a classic, and I certainly wouldn\u2019t discourage anyone from seeking it out. But while the original is a visual feast of psychedelic design and camp frights, Guadagnino\u2019s Suspiria <\/em>has an essential witchiness that the earlier film lacks. The director trades Argent\u2019s saturated palette for a dingier, muddier look, setting his film\u2019s sinister dance academy against the backdrop of the political unrest of 1970s Berlin. Dakota Johnson<\/a> stars as Susie, an American dance prodigy who finds herself at the mercy of a coven of witches lead by the mysterious Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Guadagnino is playing\u2014to various degrees of success\u2014with heavy themes here: motherhood, Berlin\u2019s post-war trauma. But I like to think of Suspiria<\/em> as the dark inverse of Call Me by Your Name<\/em>. While Guadagnino\u2019s Oscar-winning 2017 queer romance is drenched in sunshine and suffused with a kind of youthful masculine ease, Suspiria <\/em>is grim, dirty, violent, visceral, with an almost entirely female cast. Characters are constantly chewing; bones break, blood\u2014and other fluids\u2014flow, and Guadagnino\u2019s gaze never looks away. The young men in Call Me by Your Name <\/em>are intellectuals in love; they\u2019re all heart and head. The women of the Markos Dance Academy use their bodies and the bodies of others, in all their unseemly messiness, to grasp for power. Be warned: this is one is all about the gore and body horror! But isn\u2019t finding beauty in the grotesque kind of what witchiness is all about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":38738,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,3324,16],"yoast_head":"\n5 Spellbindingly Stylish Films About Witches<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You want romance? Comedy? Camp? Horror? There\u2019s a witchy movie out there for each. 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