I know that a very large contingent of Horror Press readers are themselves artists. You’re writers and musicians; many of you even make really cool games and artwork, and we love that for you! So, walk with me for a second. Imagine you’re working on your next big project. Each of your last creations were commissioned and very well received. Many people are big fans of what you do. And as you’re about to get started on your next piece…

You come in to find someone, taking everything you use to work on your art away.

Your instruments, your recording equipment, your paints, your computer, whatever it might be. It’s all being taken away from you without any sort of notice. It was there one day and gone the next. That might sound like an exaggeration, but that’s what happened to Victor Fresco, showrunner and creator of the wildly popular Netflix horror-comedy Santa Clarita Diet. He was made aware in the middle of an editing session that personnel had come on behalf of Netflix to tear down the sets and take back equipment vital for shooting the series.

It was over in that instant. Season 4 of Santa Clarita Diet was not happening.

For fans of the show, the cancellation of Santa Clarita Diet was a gut punch. A show about a listless housewife who suddenly finds herself navigating a second life as a zombie, I remember binging it in the weeks following its cancellation. I was curious what all the outrage was about, as a friend tore into a thirty-minute tirade about how unfair it was the day after the news broke. I expected not to be so upset, to be mildly amused as a blood-splattered sitcom burned away the hours of a few weekends. But when I reached that final cliffhanger episode of season 3, having grown incredibly fond of Sheila Hammond and her family, I realized how much of a colossal screw-up that Netflix had made.

HOW TO KILL A GREAT TELEVISION SHOW IN THREE PARTS

Is Santa Clarita Diet special in terms of cancellation? No. In reality, television has been a fickle world since the day cathode ray tubes started beaming Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone into the heads of millions of Americans. Editor James-Michael and I have even batted around the concept of a series of articles entirely about mourning the many, many canceled horror television shows that never made it out of their premiere seasons.

But the problem is now more than ever, Netflix at large isn’t just stagnating, it’s regressing. Santa Clarita Diet wasn’t just Netflix’s biggest mistake at the time, it’s emblematic of Netflix’s current and most likely future mistakes; its recurring failure to rework how it operates as a company, and its incessant desire to see the line go up. Because the people in charge have decided progress looks more like a statistical analysis program and less like a human mind. And the kicker of all kickers is, it’s not even that good of a program!

The problems are threefold: how Netflix decides how to make consumers watch, how Netflix decides how to pay the people making its shows, and how Netflix prices its services. 

THE MACHINE DECIDES, NOT THE VIEWER

The first issue is easy to understand in a world where social media algorithms have become as advanced as they are; Netflix itself as a streaming platform is faltering in predicting and understanding its user’s preferences.

To many people, Netflix’s user interface is just flat-out bad at finding what you want, so much so that many people resort to using an obscure system of URL codes to find the categories they want. Unless you are the ideal customer who is switching between all the most watched shows on Netflix and strictly hopping from Bridgerton to Great British Bake-Off to Wednesday, the UI doesn’t tailor well to things that don’t fit the mold.

Shows like Santa Clarita Diet were the definition of bursting out of the mold with its odd sense of humor, bloody special effects, and the bizarre overarching lore of the series. It combined a sitcom with a plot involving ancient orders, brain spiders, and an ever-expanding cover-up that brings the Hammond family together closer than they ever expected. It was really cute while never sacrificing its oddities to make itself more consumable, and driven by some great performances from leads Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant. 

Odd, off-kilter shows that the site doesn’t fit to mass appeal just don’t make it far on the front page of the site. They just aren’t offered as often as other programming, and it’s a funny Catch-22 in that way. If the show isn’t served up to viewers by the algorithm, it can’t find an audience. And if it can’t find an audience, the show isn’t served to viewers by the algorithm. Netflix is letting machines, not humans, decide what humans want to watch. While some algorithms are incredibly impressive, it’s clear that Netflix’s is rudimentary and harmful to the company’s existence.

THE (CONTRACTUALLY) WIDENING GYRE

Then there is of course what happens to these shows on the backend, the contractual agreements made, and how Netflix pays showrunners and doles out those big budgets.

Fresco explained in interviews following Santa Clarita Diet’s cancellation that the vast majority of contracts are terminated early because, Netflix’s contracts indicate that if a show gets renewed for a fourth season, the payment for the cast and crew generally gets significant increases. The budgets get bigger, and consequently, the stakes get higher for Netflix, who expect to make a massive return on investment.

This generally tracks when you look at all the Netflix horror originals that have bitten the dust. Podcast turned moody atmospheric sci-fi horror Archive 81, and the French gothic supernatural horror Marianne were killed in their first seasons despite showrunners having big plans for them. The Bill Skarsgård led Hemlock Grove was quashed by its third season, and it eventually was wiped entirely from Netflix. And if you really want to push the definition of horror (I do, always), Warrior Nun died on the vine two seasons in, and that was essentially a fantasy horror show about demon hunters. As did The Dark Crystal: Resistance, whose gateway horror and puppetry was simply too cool to live past a first season.

Of course, these were legitimately less known shows for most audiences; but Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which was struck down in its second season, wasn’t. Neither was the very popular Slasher, which in what may be the strongest case for the season 4 death-wall, was popular enough to find a new home on Shudder for its 4th and 5th seasons. But not popular enough for Netflix’s tastes. Because Netflix wants massive hits, and massive hits only.

The horror elephant in the room I haven’t mentioned so far is Stranger Things, a show the success of which might actually have been the death knell for most other horror shows to find a long-form home on Netflix. Miniseries like Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher which are limited releases will generally always have a place on Netflix because they are contained to one season, and generally low risk; same goes for the oft forgotten but really weird and really fun show Brand New Cherry Flavor.

But any hopes for more ambitious horror, serialized and ongoing horror stories, won’t make it. Because they’re up against the likes of Stranger Things, a five-season sensation known the world across. That kind of success is the benchmark, it’s the only way creatives can ensure any work they do with Netflix doesn’t go the way of Hemlock Grove and ends up completely erased from the library of shows.

It’s not sink or swim anymore, its fly out of the water or plummet to the bottom of the ocean.

IS NETFLIX EVEN WORTH IT FOR HORROR FANS ANYMORE?

That brings me to my final point about Netflix’s continual failure to deliver media many people would be interested in: when you look at the price versus the perceived value, it’s simply not worth having anymore for many people. In a cost-of-living crisis where entertainment is the first thing people are chomping at the bit to axe from their budgets, and in a world where you can find yourself an hour of cheap thrills for free by scouring the net, Netflix seems to be really excited to cut people off from itself by regularly raising prices and getting rid of content.

If you really look at the platforms that are catering to horror television in particular, you find places like Showtime and AMC; which of course includes its subsidiary and Horror Press mainstay, Shudder. Yellowjackets, Interview with a Vampire, the Dexter revival series like New Blood & Original Sin, Boulet Brothers Dragula, and a score of other shows that in yesteryear might have had a home on Netflix are now spread thin across many different platforms.

Netflix used to be a Swiss army knife that could cater to the tastes of a lot of different people. And I’m not going to lie and say Netflix is doomed, but I will say it doesn’t feel the same at all, and I definitely don’t have high hopes for good out-there media to survive on it. Now especially, in its eternal and all-consuming quest to have the next Squid Game or Stranger Things grow organically on its platform, it’s made a synthetic nightmare landscape engineered to give audiences something to like rather than figuring out what they actually do like.

Santa Clarita Diet wasn’t the only show to suffer from this change, but it’ll always be the show that convinced me of it; it’ll forever be the one in my heart that made me wake up and walk away from it.   

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
What a horrible question.

In our society, steeped in patriarchal values, this question implies that a woman, the witch, is either behaving or misbehaving, obeying or disobeying. The question limits women in who they are and what they could become. Film has much to do with social and cultural perceptions of what a woman should be. The horror genre, especially, has had the ability to imprint itself on popular culture and mold social ideas of a “good” woman and “bad” woman. “Good” women, often Final Girls, traditionally abstain from sex, drugs, and alcohol; they are down to earth, amicable, and care about others, oftentimes more than themselves. Their opposites, the bad women, are outcasts, messy, and complicated. Their distinctions are always obvious, even color-coded. Though The Craft (1996) brought a chicness to the teenage witch, by the film’s end, the bad witch, Nancy, is institutionalized, left writhing enchained in her bed, incoherently yelling. This was the fate of many “bad” women. Remove them from society, as they are uncontrollable. The witches must be burned.

Elizabeth Sankey, writer and director of Witches, was institutionalized due to postpartum psychosis. Prior to her hospital admission, she found a group of women on WhatsApp with whom to air her fears about being a mother. All women in the group had a history of pregnancy or trying to become pregnant. All would be, by our strict social ideals, bad women: the WhatsApp coven included women with thoughts of killing their children and themselves.

Who can we trust?

Motherhood is a tricky subject. American history has shown that while we need mothers, their lives are often overlooked, the baby taking center stage. The opinions and fears of mothers are left to the wayside, resulting in feelings of isolation and anxiety. After all, pregnancy can be life threatening, and is in no way as clean as it had been presented on film for decades. The maternal mortality rate has hardly changed since 2019, with approximately nineteen deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the CDC. In 2021, according to the American Medical Association, the Black maternal mortality rate was 2.6 times higher than white mothers. Suicide is a leading cause of death for recent mothers. Sankey correlates medical shortcomings, bias, discrimination, and lack of mental health resources with the skepticism women feel when sharing pregnancy-related mental struggles with doctors. Crucially, Sankey urges that guilt and shame are preventing women and those capable of pregnancy from getting the help they need, fearful they will be judged and labeled as “bad mothers,” or worse, their children are taken away from them. There is a historical basis for this, with links to 17th century America.

“Embroidered on our bones”

Sankey includes several testimonies from victims of the Salem Witch Trials, many of whom were town herbalists, midwives, and healers. These women were the ones who helped others give birth and cared for them during their healing process. However, if you were socially linked to a perceived witch during the trials, you too could be implicated. The lessons that had been learned from those trials and the hundreds of others across America in the 17th and 18th centuries were not to trust a healing woman. 

Sankey posits that many perceived witches of Salem suffered from various mental illnesses, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination from accusing townspeople. No longer was the healing women counted upon for birth assistance — that was now the domain of male doctors. For centuries since, women have been taught to police their neighbors and friends, lest they be accused of being “bad.” Those accused suffered the social, physical, and mental consequences. There is hope for mothers when covens are reclaimed. Once perceived as wild women celebrating the devil and conjuring demons, the coven can and should be a source of not only support, but guidance.

The Spellbook

Sankey breaks her documentary down into five chapters. In the form of spells, she outlines how to survive maternal madness. She calls on viewers to “fall into madness,” “step into the circle,” “speak your evil,” “invoke the spirits,” and, finally, “embrace the witch.” I posit, however, that her most important spell is the third. Speaking your evil is extremely daunting. One woman in particular admitted to frightening thoughts of sexually harming her child as a result of maternal OCD. “It was torture,” she stated. She chose self-harm instead of sharing these uncontrollable thoughts with anyone, let alone other mothers. Sankey, herself battling murderous thoughts from postpartum depression, felt as though she was in her own horror film, with an overwhelming sense of doom – “Living, breathing terror.” She told no doctor of the “hideous scenes” playing in her head. Instead, she looked inward. Am I evil? The WhatsApp coven sprang to action to get Sankey help when she revealed she had suicidal thoughts after days without sleep. “If we didn’t, who would?”

The medical center where Sankey was admitted was for mothers and their children. She was stripped of any potential harmful belongings, and then left alone with her child. This was extremely unsettling and traumatic for the other mothers, with some revealing it was their “biggest fear.” Under 24/7 surveillance, the therapy began. “Now,” Sankey states, “I was surrounded by witches.” These women became each others’ support, and the doctors worked through patients’ perinatal mental health issues. Removed was the stigma of “bad” motherhood. The testimony from Sankey and her fellow patients is raw, real, and frightening. Stepping into the circle requires tremendous strength and trust.

Embrace the Witch

I want to be a mother, but I am scared. As with most of my fears, I turn to horror films to sort myself out. I think of Rosemary Woodhouse, whose own husband assaulted her, and, like a patient named Dr. Cho, saw the devil in her child’s eyes. She was gaslit, denied care, and almost died during the early months of her pregnancy. After birth, she was discarded. She was no longer of use, though she was granted permission to raise the spawn of Satan. She had no agency or autonomy. This is what scares me most, as I have heard too many horror stories of women not being believed. Worse, as someone living with a mental illness, I worry I will be perceived as a “bad” mom. 

In the US, findings from the 2020 Maternal Behavioral Health Policy Evaluation (MAPLE) study show “2683 out of 595,237 insured mothers aged 15 to 44 across the US had suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm […] the greatest increases seen among Black; low-income; younger individuals; and people with comorbid anxiety, depression, or serious mental illness.”

What if my depression becomes unbearable after giving birth? What if I have thoughts of harm? What if I become a statistic? 

It was Sankey who, despite the harrowing testimony, calmed me. I know I can look to my sisters. Witches is a cathartic documentary, with empathy at its core. I urge my fellow mothers-to-be to join the coven, to embrace the witch. Embracing the witch means to heal — to shed society’s expectations of “good” motherhood. You are enough. And you are certainly not alone. 

To hell with “good” and “bad,” so long as you are a witch.

You can stream Witches on Mubi.