Editorials
Healing Powers: Elizabeth Sankey’s ‘Witches’ (2024)
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.
“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.
Editorials
What’s in a Look? The Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy
The Jason Voorhees redesign sparked heated debate, but is the backlash overblown? Dive into Friday the 13th’s formula and fan expectations.
If you’re a longtime reader of Horror Press, you may have noticed that I really really like the Friday the 13th franchise. Can’t get enough. And yet, I simply couldn’t muster a shred of enthusiasm for piling hate on the new Jason Voorhees redesign that Horror, Inc. recently shared with an unwitting public.
Why the Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy Feels Overblown
Hockey mask? Check. Machete? Check. Clothing? Yeah, he’s wearing it. I really didn’t see the problem, but very many people online pointed out all the places where I should. The intensity and specificity of the critiques shot me right back to 2008, reminding me distinctly of watching Project Runway with my friend’s mom while I waited for him to get home from baseball practice. What, just me?
But the horror community’s sudden transformation into fashion mavens got me thinking about other things, too: the character of the franchise as a whole, how Jason Voorhees fits into it, and why I feel like this reaction has been blown out of proportion. (A disproportionate reaction to a pop culture thing? On my Internet? Well I never.)
What Does A Jason Look Like, Anyway?
What confused me the most about this reaction was something I couldn’t quite get a bead on. What does Jason Voorhees look like? His look, both masked and unmasked (especially unmasked), changes wildly from film to film, even when he’s played by the same person (in three consecutive movies, Kane Hodder played a hulking zombie Jason, a shiny slime monster Jason, and a Jason who was mainly seen in mirrors and looked like his face was stung by a thousand bees). And then there’s the matter of him being both a zombie child and a bagheaded killer before receiving his iconic hockey mask.
However, if you synthesize the various forms of the character into the archetypical Jason Voorhees, the one that most people might visualize in their head when told to imagine him, the result doesn’t not look like this new redesign. Frankly, I even think “redesign” is too strong a word for what this is. This image shows a dude in outdoorsy clothes wearing a hockey mask. It looks enough like “Jason Voorhees” to me that my eyes just slide right off of it.
What Do We Expect From Friday the 13th, And What Do We Need?
Ultimately, many people clearly disagree with my assessment of this redesign, which led me to ponder the franchise as a whole. If there’s something to complain about with this new look, that implies that there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be a Friday the 13th movie.
This I can agree with. While the franchise is wide-ranging and expansive to the point that it has included Jason going to space, fighting a dream demon, and taking a cruise ship from a New Jersey lake to the New York harbor, the movies do still follow a reasonably consistent formula.
Step 1: Generate a group of people in a place either on the shores of Crystal Lake or in Crystal Lake township (they can travel elsewhere, but this is where they must start).
Step 2: Plunk Jason down near them, give him a variety of edged weapons, and watch what happens. One girl survives the onslaught, and sometimes she brings along a friend or two as adjunct survivors. Bada bing, bada boom, you have yourself a Friday the 13th movie.
If you fuck with that formula, you’ve got a problem. But beyond that, there’s really not a hell of a lot that the movies have in common. Sometimes you have a telekinetic final girl, other times you have a child psychologist. Sometimes the dead meat characters are camp counselors, but other times they’re partiers or townies or students attending space college.
Hell, even the people killing them aren’t always the same. Look at Pamela Voorhees in the original movie or Roy in A New Beginning.
So why this protectiveness around the minutiae of Jason’s look?
It’s Us, Hi, We’re The Problem, It’s Us
I don’t mean to discount everyone’s negative opinions about this Jason redesign. There are a multitude of aesthetic and personal reasons to dislike what’s going on here, and you don’t have to turn that yuck into a yum just because I said so. But I think we’ve had online fandoms around long enough to see how poisonous they can be to the creative process.
For instance, was The Rise of Skywalker a better movie because it went down the laundry list of fan complaints about The Last Jedi and basically had characters stare into the camera and announce the ways they were being fixed?
Look, I’m not immune to having preconceived disdain for certain projects. If I’m waiting for a new installment in a franchise and all that I’m hearing coming out of producers’ mouths is “prequel” and “television show,” those are fighting words.
However, the constant online pushback to projects that are in early development might be one reason it has taken us so long to actually get more Friday the 13th (I’m talking in addition to the long delays amid the lawsuit, of course). It’s been more than a decade and a half without a new Jason vehicle, and that time keeps on stretching longer and longer.
What Fans Really Want From a New Jason Voorhees Movie
Instead of just letting the creative tap flow and having a filmmaker put out the thing they want to make, then having somebody else take the wheel and do that same thing for the next installment, it seems like producers are terrified of making the wrong move and angering the fans, which has prevented them from actually pulling the trigger on much of anything.
Look, we survived A New Beginning. And Jason Takes Manhattan. Even Jason Goes to Hell. A controversial misstep can’t kill the immortal beast that is Friday the 13th. I say let’s just let them make one. Having something tangible to complain about is better than having nothing at all.
Editorials
Monstrous Mothers: Unveiling the Horror in ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Umma’
The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?
I challenged myself to fill a gap in my cinema history this month and watched Mommie Dearest. I was very familiar with the movie due to how many drag queens reference it and because of Joan Crawford’s villainous reputation. However, I had never seen it in its entirety before, which is weird because I write about my own maternal baggage often. Without ever seeing the film, I knew this movie, categorized as a drama, belonged under my favorite genre label. Some sources even try to meet in the middle and classify it as a psychological drama, which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting to remove itself from what it actually is. After all, what else should we call a film about being abused by the person who should love us most other than horror?
Does Mommie Dearest Belong in the Horror Genre?
The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?
Mommie Dearest recounts a version of Christina Crawford’s upbringing by Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford. It depicts her as an unstable, jealous, manipulative woman who only holds space for her beliefs. As with most abusive parents, she takes out her frustrations and feelings of inadequacy on those around her. Specifically, those who cannot fight back due to the power dynamics at play. This version of Joan is a vicious bully, which feels familiar for many people who grew up with an abusive parent. How many of us never knew what would set our parental monster off, so just learned to walk on eggshells? How many of us grew up believing we were the problem for way longer than we should have? How many of us normalized the abuse for so long that it carried over into adulthood, letting us believe being mistreated is just part of living?
Watch the trailer for Mommie Dearest
The Lasting Impact of Abusive Parents in Horror Movies
While my mother wasn’t the active bully in our home, part of my struggle with her is her complicitness in the hell she helped create for all of us. Which is why, while I don’t think Mommie Dearest is a great film, I believe it’s a decent horror flick. It made me want to revisit a better movie, Umma, that also dealt with motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Iris K. Shim’s 2022 PG-13 horror sees Sandra Oh playing a single mother who has not healed. After growing up with her own mother, who was especially cruel to her, she has built her world around that trauma and forced her daughter to live within its walls with her. As someone who was severely homeschooled by a woman who still really needs to find a therapist, Umma hits me in my feelings every time.
Watch the trailer for Umma below
Maternal Monsters: A Common Thread in Psycho, Hereditary, and More
Before the film starts, Oh’s character, Amanda, has turned her back on her family and cultural heritage. She has built a life that she’s not really living as she hides in her home, afraid of electricity due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mom. So, when her uncle shows up with her mother’s ashes, she is triggered and haunted. All of the issues she hasn’t dealt with rush to the surface, manifesting in ways that begin turning her into her deceased mom. Amanda does eventually force herself to confront her past to avoid becoming her mother and hurting her daughter. So, while Umma is different from Mommie Dearest, it’s not hard to see they share some of the same DNA. Scary moms make the genre go round which is why movies like M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters, Serial Mom, Mother, May I?, and so many others will always pull an audience by naming the monster in the title.
I doubt I am the first person on Norma Bates’ internet to clock that some of horror’s most notorious villains are parents, specifically moms. I’m also sure I cannot be the first person to argue Mommie Dearest is a horror movie on many levels. After all, a large part of the rabid fanbase seems to be comprised of genre kids who grew up wondering why the film felt familiar. However, I hope I am the first to encourage you to watch these two movies if your momma trauma will allow you to hold space for a couple more monstrous mothers this month. Both have much to say about how we cope with the fallout of being harmed by the people who should keep us safe.
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