The Salem Witch Trials haunt our culture, and are one of the inevitable points of discussion whenever a debate arises concerning the merits of atheism or religious belief. I think one aspect of the phenomenon is often overlooked: human beings have a tendency to externalize the emotions of the moment. The early New England settlers were stressed to the core of their psyche from a long voyage across the seas, followed by a hardscrabble life amid alien woodlands which claimed their loved ones at a frightening rate. It isn’t hard to understand why they would have been prone to see evil lurking in every shadow, and faith as their only reliable weapon against that evil. The new world, after all, had taken just as much from them as they from it. From their point of view, it probably paid to be paranoid.

The fallout of this paranoia were the infamous events all of us are familiar with. Considering what happened in Salem, the family at the center of the 2015’s The Witch appear to make out a bit better for a time. And then they stumble across something horrifying. Read the rest of this entry →