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.
In our society, steeped in patriarchal values, this question implies that women, witches, are 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’s Witches and Postpartum Psychosis
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.
Motherhood, Medical Neglect, and Mental Health Stigma
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.
The Salem Witch Trials and the Fear of Healing Women
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: Surviving Maternal Madness
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?”
Inside a Mother and Baby Unit
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.
Horror Films, Pregnancy Fears, and Losing Bodily Autonomy
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?
Embracing the Witch: Healing Beyond “Good” Motherhood
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.
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
