The Witch Movie Project Ep 5 - 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999) vs 'The VVitch' (2015) - The Witch Movie Project

Episode Transcript
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(00:20):
All right, Courtney, here we are.
I'm so scared.
We've got the, this is the foundfootage version of our podcast
here, The Witch Movie Project.
If you can't tell already, the firstmovie is The Blair Witch Project.
We named the wholeproject after this movie.
Kind of.
Kind of.
We were also kind of lazy.
We just said The Witch Movie Project.

(00:42):
But,
Yeah.
It started to grow on me and then it justbecame, yeah, it's, that's what it is.
Cause it's a project for us.
We're doing this.
this thing together, and this week Thetwo movies on deck are, to me, they
both defined almost a new type of genre.

(01:03):
Uh, it's, you got the Blair WitchProject, which was one of your
original, the granddaddy of them,all found footage horror movies.
Yes.
We'll get into that, and howthat found footage movie, It
like leaked into real life.
Like
It's incredible!

(01:24):
the other movie we have isthe A24 represent right there.
I got my limited edition A24 shirt on.
It's the A24s.
The Witch, or The Vivitch,as it's spelt out.
The V V I T C H.
That movie in its own is, to me, anotheralmost new genre defining type of film.

(01:46):
I mean, you got something that's set inthe 1630s, it's historically accurate,
there's no real, like, I mean, jumpscares, it's upshore a little bit, but
it's not your typical horror movie.
It's an atmospheric horror movie, really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of cinematographythat goes into that.
Yeah.
Creepy woods.

(02:07):
Both movies got the creepy woods.
They're building this,uh, this atmosphere.
And it all builds to these finalesthat are, you know, Basically in
the film lore stuck there forever.
Now these, these, the, the, the endof the Blair Witch Project, it's not
a spoiler, the final scene of the guystanding against the wall, that's,

(02:31):
that's, if you show that screen tosomebody, they're like, Oh yeah, Oh shit.
That scared me.
That's the Blair Witch Project, you know?
So
I heard, I saw a rumor.
I mean, this is like internet rumor.
Tell me what you think.
But Stephen King even said, um, hisson had tried to show it to him and
he said, you got to turn this off.
It's too scary.
now let's get into this.
Let's just go ahead and startwith the Blair Witch Project.

(02:52):
Yeah.
What you just said right there.
I don't know if this is true or notbecause that's what this whole movie
brought up in real life All the way,let's go through some of the stuff
that they set up in just the marketing.
The Blair Witch herself, Ibelieve the lead actors thought
that that was a real myth.

(03:15):
Does that, does that make sense?
A real myth?
Cause, but, but that's, they were,they were led to believe and then
people thought after the moviecame out, the Blair Witch was real.
No.
Yeah.
You have to remember thisis like nineties, 99.
This is when, um, internet wasstarting to really become like.
A regular useful thing.

(03:36):
More and more people like being ableto create their own websites and, um,
use the internet for different things.
And so I was just Because I, I mean Iobviously was alive during this era.
I'm, I'm a little bit old.
A little bit.
Just a little bit.
But, um, Yeah, I remember theBlu ray was coming out and it
being a huge, like, debate.

(03:57):
Everybody being like, this was real,they found these real, this real
footage, all this, like, talk about it.
And I'll admit, I didn'tsee the movie back then.
I, I don't know, I musthave missed the craze.
I'm not sure what I was doing.
But, I remember Well, but in researchingthis and seeing that they created a
website to say, you know, to market thismovie and to say, we found footage and

(04:23):
everybody believing that everybody, Imean, that kind of going viral, if you
will, if that was even a thing back
Oh, it was, yeah.
Now,
And everybody beganbeing like, Oh my gosh.
So going to the movie theaters, thinkingwere looking at real footage of people
who'd gone missing and died in the
it, excuse me, not only that, but inthe, in the marketing for this thing,

(04:48):
the three main actors in the movie,Heather, Donna, Hugh, Michael C.
Williams and Joshua Leonard werereported missing in real life,
not outside the movie, beforethe movie released, they reported
these people missing as a PR stunt.
So there's all these things.
Like you said, in the timeperiod, in the 90s, this is before

(05:09):
misinformation really hit theinternet, like you said, we didn't.
are like, this is real.
If I'm seeing it, it's fact.
I did see this in theaters.
I remember going throughthis and feeling this craze.
I even remember, I waspro wrestling at the time.
I was a pro wrestler.
I was a backyard wrestler at the time.
And we held an event called Halloween.
And the flyer for the eventwas the Blaze Witch Project.

(05:32):
That was my name.
I was Blaze.
And it was my eyes like that.
Yep.
And I remember people even being thinkingthat was out, out there because they
were like, Oh, well, how does their,their event tie into the Blair Witch?
It didn't.
It was the Blaze Witch.
It was me.
So it was all deliberateand a very, almost a prank.

(05:56):
Yeah.
Like it's almost a prank oneverybody to, to pull the wool
over the eyes of the world.
Cause nobody, nobody like itwas, it was more polarizing.
Is it real or not?
Then is it good or not?
Right.
And that, to me, was interesting.
Because both these movies, yougot Blair Witch and you got The

(06:18):
Witch, they are both polarizingmovies in their own right, because
you've got two different spectrums.
One side will say, oh, this wasboring, what, nothing even happened.
I didn't see anything.
Yeah.
And the other side will say, oh my god,I was fucking terrified the entire time.
There's really no in between.
Did you?

(06:39):
yeah.
Well, I have to say, okay, so I've knownof the Blair Witch Project and the movie
for all these years, all this time.
And I will, I mean, maybe I should beashamed to admit this, but, This is
the first time I actually watched themovie in preparing for this today.
I watched it twice,
Okay.

(06:59):
research, so the first time just to enjoyit, just to soak it in, just to see it
for the first time and be like, okay,it's finally time for me to see this movie
Um,
all about.
I will admit the first time Iwatched it, I was like, that was it?
Because I was a little surprised.
at how little happened whenso much was happening, right?

(07:21):
Like, I guess I wasn't, I, I wasjust a little taken aback by it.
Like, wow.
So all that lead up and all the likerunning through the woods and the
jostling of the camera and, you know,seeing different kinds of weird little
things happening throughout the movie.
And then it ends
yeah.
with that, you know, creepy iconicending, but like, then it's over.

(07:43):
It just ends.
And I was like, that was it?
That's crazy.
Now, once again, this is a, thisis, that's going back to the period
of time that it released in becausethis was way before your A24 type
movies with no happy endings.
You got happy endings back then.
You got the good outcome.

(08:04):
Not here.
So yeah, when the, when thecredits rolled, which a lot of
people forgot to read the credits.
It says, it basically says inthe credits it was made up.
It's just real, real small.
So when the people in real life wentsearching Maryland for the Blair
Witch after this movie came out,if they'd have read the credits,
it would have said it's not real.
But!

(08:24):
It was there.
Yeah.
I mean,
Now that did not impedemy love for the movie.
Like I still, but I think that thereal like genius of this movie,
well, I don't say real genius.
I mean, like, There's a lot of genius tothe movie, the way it was filmed and the,
what you have there, what you're watching,but the whole story around it, like we're

(08:49):
talking about all the buildup and the, youknow, almost pranking the world with this
movie is kind of the more impressive part.
If you think about it,like I just am amazed.
I mean, uh, Heather Donahue's mom,even well after the movie was.
It was released.
People should have known bythen, but um, she was getting

(09:12):
sympathy cards in the mail.
So people were like, I'm sosorry, your daughter's dead.
And she's like, she's
that's insane.
Like that's, that just goesto show the power of it,
Yes.
this movie.
And then, and then after thismovie, thousands, thousands
upon thousands of found footage,horror movies have come out.

(09:35):
Not all good.
I will say I love watching them.
AMC has a great documentary.
Shudder has a great documentaryon found footage movies.
You should check thatthing out if you haven't.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.
And all of the people going out tomake their own movies in the woods,
all these people going out to, uh, toexperience something creepy or like

(09:57):
this in the woods after this, theysaid, uh, the 1999 2000 hunting season
was the worst year on record becauseso many people were in the woods
filming their own little documentariesthat it scared all the wildlife away.
That's incredible.
I will say I was one of those.
I was out in my woods in Tennessee andI was, we were filming documentaries out

(10:18):
in the woods, but I had my beanie on.
We were ready.
We were looking for witches.
We were looking for them.
We were looking for anythingout of the ordinary.
Cause, hey.
We just saw a movie hit the theatersand make tons of money that had this
that we thought might have been real.
So why wouldn't people hit the woods, golook for Bigfoot, go look for whatever
things they think are out there.

(10:39):
What's funny is
the camera that they used inthe movie for Blair Witch.
I had the same one.
Most people did.
They bought that thing at Circus City.
I don't know if you remember Circus City.
That was long before Best Buy.
Yeah.
Best Buy put them out of business.
This is probably why BestBuy put them out of business.
It's because people like thecreators of the Blair Witch.

(11:03):
Return that camera to Circuit Cityafter the eight days of shooting
that it took to make the Blair Witch.
Mm
So we got that refund to bring thatbudget down a little bit more, but
That same camera wasthen sold for 10, 000.
that's wild, is it not?
What a, what a fact out.
Yeah.
This movie though,

(11:23):
Movie
you thinking when you watched it?
Just from the beginning, you'vegot the, you got them, you got them
all Burkittsville sign, which hasbeen, that thing's been stolen three
times now, but they're out there.
history, right?
Movie relics.
we should go out thereand find that thing.
Is it still there?
I don't know.
Next season, I'd like to havethat Burkittsville sign behind me.

(11:46):
would be such a fun trip, wouldn't that?
Oh, we're gonna have to make that.
We could go, yeah, wecould go hit up Maryland.
We could see all these little spots.
It would be amazing.
Oh, I'd love it.
But what was your So, from the beginning,what was your initial thoughts going
in and seeing them in the car and then,you know, they're playful, they're
all this, they're talking about this.

(12:07):
What were you feeling?
Were you, did you feel likeyou were immersed in it enough
or were you an outsider still?
Um, yeah, I, I was maybe sort of, um,my actor was, you know, being real
critical and kind of listening in on theconversation and being like, how natural

(12:28):
do I feel like this conversation is?
Do I feel like it's scripted?
Do I feel like they're stiff?
And I did feel kind of like that, thatalmost we don't know each other that
well awkwardness in their banter, right?
Which I mean, that would just be natural.
It would be like, you know, wouldsome, some, uh, young people with

(12:51):
access to camera making themselvesa little documentary, would they
be like, let's film each othergetting ready and packing up and I'm
going to tease you while we do it.
And, then the switch from that to whenthey would actually film something.
Hmm.
You know, even like at thecemetery or things like that.
And you had Heather being likedocumentary voice going on.

(13:15):
is the town
Yeah.
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you saw like that shift and thenthe camera would switch back to just
the banter and it was like, The F wordwould come out and they would just be
like, you know, and, um, so I was, Iwas paying a lot of attention to that.
Like, how do these characters interact?
Like, does this feel natural to me ordoes it feel like it's very like stiff?

(13:38):
You know what?
It's a good lead up to whenyou're watching the beginning.
It's a very good lead up to see howthey're going to react under stress later.
Because when Heather, Mike andJosh, they get lost, scared,
they start hearing creepy noises.
They're in a tent.
You know, this is now, now you'regetting up until this point, it's

(14:01):
It's just your full blown classicset up for a bad night in the woods.
Like it's, you know somethingbad's about to happen.
It's, it's this almost happyand you're just going, you kind
of go downward all the way.
Like all the, you know what I mean?
Like that's how it felt to me.
From the atmosphere, you gotthe shaky cameras, night vision,

(14:23):
just like, well, and thefact that they didn't have a
cameraman, they had the actors.
They were like, going to giveguys like a crash course in camera
work and how to use the camera.
then you're going toshoot the whole thing.
And we're just going to be out there.
And the actors signed somethingthat said, you know, yeah, I'm

(14:43):
okay with you messing with myhead, like messing with your heads.
So they knew going intothis, like whatever reaction
they want to get out of us.
And to be in this movie, it needsto be as natural as possible.
So they're going to mess with us.
and that banter and everything in themovie that seems so natural is because
basically they were not given scripts.
They were given a 35 page documentthat Outlined the mythology

(15:08):
and the plot of this movie.
Side of that, they weresupposed to do this.
They were supposed to just adlib, banter, at 42 ish minutes
in, when the tent's shaking.
Yeah.
Not scripted.
So that's a real reaction.
that was going to
They didn't know what was gonna
imagine they signed up for thisand it was probably terrifying.

(15:28):
So, um, and the fact that.
Like the, um, the legendof the Blair Witch.
They gave them that andtold them it was real.
That this was a real legend, thiswas a real town, this was real.
Um, and then I had to lookinto it further because the
interviews with the townspeopleat the beginning was really cool.
Everybody they interviewedseemed so natural, so realistic.

(15:52):
Um, they told the actors, Um, the threemain actors, they were real townspeople.
And I would have believed that too.
I would have been going into it beinglike, Oh wow, these townspeople,
these The one that intrigued me themost was the woman with the child.
happen.
Thank you!
and the child kept coveringher mouth and she was like, I

(16:13):
know it's just a scary story.
Don't worry.
It's not true.
It's really true.
I thought
just like,
that That little piece, Ingridright there, to me, almost, without
that, the rest of the movie, ittakes away from it a little bit.
It doesn't ruin the movie, but ifyou don't have that little piece,
for some reason, to me, it stuck out.

(16:34):
It felt genuine.
Yes, the kid covered her mouth.
The kid was not covering her mouth becauseshe knew what she was talking about.
The kid was just covering her mouth.
Like, she was ready to go.
Bored.
being kids.
Right.
Put me into it.
And
in the interviews and you have to reallylike listen to what they're saying.
Um, the guy who made the kids.
Stand in the corner he killed onechild and then he would, you know,

(16:58):
that's all like foreshadowing, right?
And, and it's all important.
You have to like really pay attention towhat they're saying, but could you imagine
being the three main people and hearingall this, thinking it's real, thinking
they're real people telling you this?
And then going into the woods to film.
you're just out there like they are outthere and hearing stuff, not knowing

(17:20):
what's going to happen, thinking thismight be a little bit real, not knowing.
And they got, yeah, you got thedirectors, you got people messing
with them night after night.
There's one crazy scene inthere where it's pitch dark.
The cameraman's running out,they're running and they're saying,

(17:44):
At that moment, It was so intense thatthere was a moment, there was a screen,
it was supposed to be a pan to the leftwhere you actually saw the Blair Witch.
You would have seen a white dress butthe cameraman, so frantic, didn't make
that pan left and they never re shot itso the Blair Witch didn't make an end.
Yeah.
To me that's crazy.

(18:04):
curious to see what thatwould have looked like?
Oh,
a picture.
They, all these years later, if theydon't have a picture of that Blair
Witch and what she looked like.
They need to release it.
I need to see.
I mean, there's got to beout there how she looks.
I think it's in later movies.
I think they made some movies and theymade them a little more, you know,

(18:26):
I'll have to watch some next.
They made some movies and they'rea little more Hollywood fied.
Like it's not the foundfootage type stuff.
Um,
Yeah.
me it kind of takes away from,from a little bit of what they did.
They add more layers to it.
There's actually a movie calledThe Blair Witch and it's basically
a remake of the documentary.

(18:48):
Not good.
It's not that good.
heard not good things, but, whichis why I didn't go into that even
when getting ready for this today.
I wasn't gonna go and like,watch all these other things.
I wanted to just be like,hey, fresh from this movie,
watching it for the first time.
then kind of looking into all of theseinteresting facts behind the scenes.

(19:10):
And yeah, I was really, um, intriguedto be like, so in watching it the
second time while taking my noteswas just like, I mean, you, I was
probably like nose pressed to thescreen, like looking for every detail,
like what's in the dark over there.
What are they listening to?
What is that sound?
Yeah.
What'd you pick up on?

(19:30):
Anything, anything crazy in there?
So I think the second time I watchedit, I was paying more attention
to what sounds they were hearing.
Cause it seemed like every night.
Right?
And the tension is building asthey're getting more and more lost.
Um, they're, you know, Heather islike, in the beginning she's totally
like, I'm, I know where we're going.
I've got, I don't even need the map.

(19:52):
I know where we're going.
I've got this.
And you can see like the tensionbetween the three characters.
And, uh, and then at night there'slike sounds that wake them up
and she's trying to record.
She wants to get that on camera,wants to get the sound on there.
Um, There was, um, I think it was theone you're talking about when she yells,

(20:16):
What the, what is that?
is that?
They're like, start running.
I think it was children's sounds.
Oh yeah.
Children laughing, a baby crying,and I guess the director had like
recorded kids playing outside, thenplayed that on speakers at night when
they were sleeping in their tent.
So that's what they woke to, islistening to like, children playing,

(20:39):
singing songs, and babies crying.
So you hear her say like, therewas a baby crying, and he's
like, there's no baby out here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that part.
And it just, to me, to me, so a lot, thisis what polarized a lot of people is that
You got all this frantic stuff going on.
It's shaky.
People are in the theater getting sick,but they, but there's people out there

(21:01):
who are like, I didn't see anything.
This was, this was awful.
Like, what is this?
But then you got me on the otherside, who's like, like terrified.
I get it that it's almost like Jaws.
In Jaws, you don't really see the shark.
You don't see him.
You don't see Jaws.
And that's a whole story in itself.

(21:21):
But this is the same type of situation.
You don't have to see the evilor the fear to know it's there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost like I wonder thedifference between people who
have a very vivid imagination.
So they fill in the blanks themselves.
Yeah,
Um, and I'm a very imaginative person.
That's just who I am.
I've always been.
So when I watch something like theBlair Witch, I don't need to see what

(21:44):
they might be seeing or experiencingbecause my brain and my body is
filling in all the details myself.
And I'm like, this is terrifying.
exactly.
That's that's what it does.
And this movie did a great job at that.
And it's like I said, it was oneof the first of its time to come
out with a found footage style.

(22:05):
Um, we have the most terrifying.
I mean, there's there'sa shot right there.
Like
In the corner.
when he's standing in thecorner, and that's how ends
Yes.
haunted people for a long time.
This image is stuck inpeople's minds right here.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, me.

(22:26):
the nose, uh, interview was parodiedand, and, you know, made fun of and
brought back over and over again for thenext decade after this movie came out.
It was like iconic images.
of this movie that noone's ever going to forget.
The fear.
we just started this whole episode.
We just started talking aboutthis with, with a little homage.

(22:48):
We got our beanies on.
I got my flannel on.
Like, I'm ready for the Blair Witch.
the plaid shirt.
Yeah, I, that's it.
Like, this This movie, though, itreally did change an era, change
the way we thought about movies,regardless of how polarizing it was.
I mean, some of the best thingsout there are the most polarizing.

(23:10):
Let's be real.
What were your final thoughts on?
Go ahead, you got something else?
let's, let's just touch on some of thethings that they found in the woods.
And I do want to mention that Wiccanpeople, um, people who to the Wiccan
faith, if you will, um, didn'tparticularly like this movie and Um,

(23:30):
you know, no surprise, it's becausethey're like, you make witches look bad.
the truth is, the movie was created outof the folklore of witches being in the
woods, and the woods being evil, right?
And that has existed since thebeginning of folklore, um, Typically

(23:50):
coming from a Christian background.
A lot of those, um, fairy tales andfolklore we know about were designed,
created, uh, written and told to warnchildren and warn people about the
evils of the untamed wilderness, right?
So you have that idea.

(24:11):
It's like, yeah, it doesmake witches look bad.
It does make, you know, certainsymbols like pentagrams or, um,
a lot of people get scared whenthey see symbols like that.
And even when they go into the woodsand they have the piles of rocks,
they get scared because they'relike, who put these rocks here?
Yeah,
And the, the hanging, um, kind of symbolsand things that are in the branches.

(24:35):
They like walk around, theyfind the voodoo shit, you
let me jump in on that and tell you themost unbelievable part in the whole movie.
And it's when he says, Rednecksaren't, can't be this creative.
Yes, they can.
I've, I've, I know Rednecks.
I lived in Tennessee.
I've seen more creative stuff than that.
So that's the most unbelievablepart in the whole part.
The whole movie is when he says,Rednecks can't be this creative.

(24:57):
Yeah, they can.
okay.
So we're offending witches andrednecks all over the place here.
go ahead though.
But tell me more about.
right.
That's totally true.
And, and honestly, that's just one of thenatural, um, even as children, we have
these, um, natural tendencies to want tocreate magic by bundling sticks together

(25:20):
and making potions with mud and leavesand herbs and whatever we find in the
forest and, you know, things like that.
It's our natural, like,That's how kids play, right?
When they see all these, like,hanging, cool, like, you know,
stick symbols and things like that,and there's, like, one that looks
like a hanging man, they had, like,sculpted it into a, like, a twig man.

(25:42):
All of that is symbology of certainthings, and it can be totally made up from
someone who doesn't know anything aboutwitchcraft, or it could be intentional,
like, I'm going to make this hangingman and it's going to represent someone
and, you know, putting it out there.
Either way, I mean, it's all kind of partof that, you know, society, but that sort

(26:06):
of like symbolism that the wilderness has.
That's awesome.
That's great to point outfor people out there who are
picking up those little pieces.
And there's also some knowledge, Iguess, that the Blair Witch, it might
have been based on the Bell Witch.
Which, the Bell Witch was in Tennessee,and there's a whole story about

(26:27):
the Bell Witch basically attacking,mostly invisible, the Bell Witch was
invisible too, kind of how the moviewas, and attacked this Bell family.
So, it's kind of loosely based on that.
But, you know, how
Well, in most of the folklore that yousee witches in, they're going to be

(26:48):
in the woods because they're kind ofan outcast from society anyway, right?
Baba Yaga, you know, those, thosestories, but even stories like Red
Riding Hood or, you know, Um, you know,most of the fairytales and folklore
we know have something to do withgo, don't go in the woods, right?
Yep.
That the woods is where evil lies.

(27:08):
Or darkness or the devil.
And so if a witch is going to conversewith the devil, and we're gonna go into
that in the witch movie, but it's allgoing to happen in the wilderness or
in the woods because they believed.
least that's kind of the Christiancome from or the Christian ideology
was that, um, that wilderness is bad,that anything natural and wild is bad.

(27:33):
Is conducive to evil, we need to betamed, we need to be, um, you know, our
personal nature, but also the wilderness.
So in order for like colonists and,um, you know, coming from England
or Europe to come and colonizeAmerica, they would be like, well,
we need to, we need to tame the wild.

(27:55):
We need to convert the savages.
We need to bulldoze this area ofall the trees, make a house, put
fences around our property, makeour animals, put them into pens.
Like we, we are going totame all this wilderness.
It's manifest destiny, right?
So that is where thatwhole ideology comes from.

(28:16):
Is that, um, you know, carefulof the woods because that's
where evil lies, right?
is,
do you feel about the woods?
You like the woods?
Yeah.
most people, most pagans, and evennon pagans, I mean I think most people
will be like, actually, I feel themost spiritual in the woods, in nature.

(28:36):
When I go out, I feel mynatural self come out.
I'm embracing the wildness of whoI really am, and that's connecting
with the trees and the wilderness.
danger in the wilderness.
You can't, you have to respect it, right?
The bears and the wolves live there andthey're just doing what's natural to them.
They're not out to kill me.

(28:57):
They're just going to do what's natural.
So you have to respect that balance.
You have to respect nature.
Um, So, I mean, that's, that's where thekind of conflict, I guess, comes in when
it comes to like, why the Wiccan peoplewould have been upset with this movie is
like, you're trying to make it look evil.
You're playing into the whole idea, right?

(29:18):
Which I think is just like, yeah,and every other story that's ever
been made about the woods fromthe Christian perspective, right?
Pretty much, I mean that's, you hit thenail on the head there, and I want to
get your final thoughts on Blair Witch.
Before we get to the, to the, tothe witch and get more into it.
So final thoughts, wouldyou watch this movie again?

(29:41):
Did you like it?
What stood out?
All that kind of stuff.
What do you think?
I love this movie probably more for whatit is, how different, how innovative, how,
yeah, just, um.
different it was made and all of that.

(30:03):
I don't know if I need towatch it a bunch more times.
I would watch it again, I guess,but it's like, okay, I've seen it.
I know what it's all about.
Um, the movie itself, I'vepicked it apart by minute.
So I'm like, I'm good there, but I'mjust like, I'm more impressed and
wowed by the making of it, I guess.

(30:24):
That's where I'm at.
And this movie came out in 99.
This is 2024.
Kind of held up, kind ofdidn't hold up in some regards.
There's other found footage moviesout now that might be better.
Definitely a whole lotmore that are worse.
This one definitely started it.
I do love that it's, to me, it's a pieceof art, piece of art in every kind of way,

(30:49):
because you had the real life bleed in,you had all that kind of stuff going on in
the press, the PR, with the movie itself.
Like the movie itself was fun to watch.
Not only that, this thing onlymade, it cost 60, 000 to make.
Well, hold on.
59, 550 because they returnedthat camera to Circuit City.

(31:12):
Right.
In
Made 248 million.
For every
the box
1 they spent, it wasabout 11, 000 in return.
You don't get that anywhere else.
There's never been another movie.
This is the top budget to boxoffice ratio movie of all time.
It's hard to ignore that they didsome stuff right and did a lot right.

(31:34):
to set the stage for what came later.
So, that's my final thoughts.
I love the movie.
I wish I had the pictureof the Blaze Witch Project.
I think it was one of myfirst wrestling performances.
Shake
mean, if you want to get the effect, Icould just grab my camera and like run
around the house for a minute, but yeah.
it real hard.
You gotta, I mean, honestly, camerastoday aren't even made for that.

(31:57):
Like, your iPhone camera, they got autostabilizing on it and all this stuff.
You can't even have those kinds of shots.
a movie far better with your, withyour own phone camera nowadays.
Absolutely.
Let's get to the witch.
Robert Eggers A 24 I I caughtthis movie late at night.

(32:22):
I put it off for a long time.
It came out in 2015, and I don't know.
I maybe, I don't even knowif I watched the trailer.
I probably heard it was boring.
I saw, oh, it's set in the 1600s.
Ugh, how good could it
everybody's worried.
It's a history lesson.
be?
And it kind of was.
It kind of was.

(32:44):
It was very true to the times.
I mean, I wasn't there.
You were there.
You were around in the 1630s,apparently, but this is
life is so much more hard back then,
What's, what's funny, what's, what'sfun and ironic about this is that
this is set in the same time periodthat the autopsy of Jane Doe, her

(33:05):
body would have come from, apparently.
This is the time period.
So now we're watching, this iswhere Jane Doe's time was, so I
tried to look at it like that alsoand think, oh, where's Jane Doe?
In the middle of all this.
This movie though, theatmosphere, uh, it's, it's bleak.
It's dreary.

(33:25):
It is.
A lot of gray skies and theyused natural lighting and almost
the whole making of the movie.
So even like they, they just usedlike a three wick candle kind of thing
for the candlelight, but for the mostpart it was just natural lighting,
which made it very dismal, right.
And it fits 1630s, because if I'mthinking 1630s, that's about what

(33:48):
I would expect it to look like.
I would think, yeah, 1630s inthe winter, out in the cold.
Farm and the woods and let's just get toit because the way that the movie starts
they basically you get banished from
Yeah, I actually had to like lookinto this first part a couple of
times because I was, starts almostlike in the middle of the story.

(34:12):
Yeah,
Don't you think?
Like, they're banishinghim from the village.
But why?
You don't really get,like, it's not super clear.
You have to kind of decipher it basedon what he says and what they say.
and as close as I can get, and from whatthe forums on the internet, you know,
people have kind of, like, discussed it.

(34:33):
uh, These are the Puritans, right?
So you have like the um, core of a lotof witch trials and things happening
in England back in like the 15thcentury, um, to the 17th century.
That was carried over into thosewitch trials happening in the 17th
century in New England here in America.

(34:55):
Well, this is when the Puritans leaveEngland because they don't believe the
King's Church is Rigid enough, right?
They're like, they're allowing too much.
They're taking too muchliberties with the gospel.
So we're going to be more pure.
We're going to go by thegospel in pure, you know, ways.
And so they, they, they go.

(35:17):
Thus the Puritans are born and theycome from England to America hoping
to be able to create a community wherethey're going to be real strict with
their religious, you know, fervor,like their devotion and all that.
And I think what they're sayinghere in the beginning is that,
um, the father of this family islike, you have become too lax.

(35:38):
You know, we came from England, weset this community up, this village,
we, we sacrificed so much so thatwe could be here and practice
our faith and you, are too lax
mm hmm.
faith, I guess, meaning that he andhis family want to be more strict
Yep.
these Puritans.

(35:59):
And so he's banishedto go live on his own.
All right, we see how strict theyare later on like he's they are
very very strict in their religiousReligion and they are banished.
So the family is exiled from thePuritan plantation Then they go
set up camp in a dense dark forest.
I don't know why whywould you pick that place?

(36:21):
What did it have?
I imagine that there was just enough of aclearing to be able to clear some of the
trees and make some structures so thatthey could, you know, have protection.
And, mean again, they're coming froma mentality or a mindset that is evil.

(36:41):
Yeah.
so like the trees, the forest, theiridea of that is nothing good out there.
So this is a clear enough clearing,we can set up our, you know, safe
space, um, and fences, and maybe havesome protection from whatever the
wilderness is going to have in it.

(37:02):
I mean, wolves, things like that.
Rabbits.
We're gonna get into the rabbit symbolismbecause there's a lot of rabbits in there.
Yeah.
But the movie, when they, when they goto the farm, they, they, they get exiled.
They move out.
Things already, they, they, The downwardspiral begins because right at the
beginning, they're already on edge.

(37:23):
They get on edge.
They're already on edge because they left.
And then the baby disappears.
Not a good start.
Not a good one.
Creepiest part.
I have to say, like, just about anybody,I don't know anybody wouldn't be watching
a movie and be like, Don't hurt the baby!
Yes.
get babies involved!

(37:44):
Like, that's the peak of horror to me.
It's like, you really want to rattle me?
Put a baby involved in thehorrors of what's going on.
That's,
The baby disappearing at the beginningis, it lights the fuse to that slow burn.
mm hmm.

(38:04):
The slow burn of tension.
The rest of the movie you always feel likesomething's lurking, right out of sight.
Like you said, the natural light.
Makes you even more immersed in what'sgoing on, you're in the woods, this
movie is another classic example of A24being able to isolate you with them,

(38:27):
Yes.
into it, like you can't, it's almost likeyou can't pause the movie, you can't leave
the room, you can't get out of there,and you're stuck in the 17th century,
and it's scary, it's scary as hell, likeyou're, you're there with them, and a
lot of people will say that's boring,No, I didn't think so because sure it

(38:48):
is if you are watching that movie andyou're in the 2024 or whatever you're
at, if you're in this present time andyou don't try to put yourself where they
are, sure it's boring because guess what?
They're not all doing this.
They don't, they don'thave TVs in front of them.
They don't have all this.
And you know what?
They had too much work to doto be doing any of that anyway.

(39:09):
There was not a lot of idle.
In fact, you know,again, idleness is a sin.
So they, they even, you hear themreprimand each other for that.
Like, what are you doing sitting idle?
And like, how dare you be idle?
Um.
I love the verbiage.
I love the, the, the spoken dialogue.
I love the way they talked.
I mean the, the title itself,the Viva Itch, the two Vs.

(39:31):
That's on purpose because the letter Wwas not common yet by then, by the 1630s.
So even the title itselfreflected historical accuracy,
which I thought was very,
Yeah, it's called Jacobean English, by theway, they were gonna have a backstory for
this family that they had come from Sussexin England, but, um, the director liked

(39:53):
the father, you, you'll to tell us hisname, the actor, and he's from Yorkshire,
so they decided to change the backstorybecause they liked his accent so much.
Um,
that's Ralph Anderson.
Now
Yes.
that guy's voice you talking about that.
'cause he plays the maincharacter in the Witch.
He plays William
Yes.

(40:13):
Ralph Anderson's voice.
Oh,
Gravelly.
yeah.
Now,
He could, he could read mesome bedtime stories at night.
I'd be okay with that.
I think his, the tone, literally thetone of his voice fits this movie so
well because you are forced to listen.

(40:35):
Now, he's, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a fanof his because he's done, he did
Loreth's, Loreth's voice in Diablo 4.
He's a video game character voice also.
So
That's why.
Yeah.
his voice, I was like, Oh, I knowthis, you know, it's distinct.
Let's talk about the, the director,because you mentioned him, Robert Eggers.

(40:55):
Yes.
Now, Robert Eggers, who, by the way,let me tell you he's got a new movie
coming out Christmas this year.
Guess what Robert Eggers just did?
Nosferatu.
Nosferatu will be droppingat Christmas this year.
He made The Witch.

(41:15):
He made A24's The Lighthouse,which had Robert Pattinson in it.
That's a great one.
That was, yeah.
That's a weird one.
As they all are.
So this guy, I can't wait to see whatRobert does with, you Nosferatu, cause
that's a, that's a horror classic there,and, you know, that's the one with the
vampire, and that's the iconic sceneof Nosferatu, that was, that was a

(41:36):
silent movie too, so, I can't wait forthat, but that's coming out this year.
But he, but he made, but the witch, he putso much time and effort into the witch,
Yeah.
Doesn't he have like a carpentrybackground or something and
they had to make everythingfrom scratch for this movie.
I can't stop.
that was like authenticto the time period.
So they just, they had to make it

(41:57):
Which is awesome.
I mean, that's what they did then.
They
we have around us.
weren't, they weren't ordering shit onAmazon and getting it sent overnight.
Like they had a,
let's get back to the movie.
Let's talk about the partwhere your baby disappears.
You got stuff going on inSamuel, baby Samuel vanished.

(42:20):
Under promises care.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
You had something there?
the folklore behind witches takingbabies and children is very common.
You hear that a lot in a lot of stories.
Um, one, they told this to children,first of all, to scare them into doing,
to behaving, which, you know, couldbe effective if, you know, you don't
know anything about psychologicaltrauma, but, uh, they told that, you

(42:45):
know, don't behave if you don't stayout of the woods, the witch is going
to get you, um, and, Witches like toeat babies, Hansel and Gretel, we're
gonna get eaten by a witch in the woods.
is very, uh, very common in folklore,but it might originate from the fact that
a lot of accused witches were midwives,

(43:06):
Ah.
and midwives were helping womenwith their, um, reproductive needs.
So whether they needed help inbirthing a baby or getting pregnant.
They also helped with abortionsor with, um, contraception,
herbs, things like that.
So you can understand how in some otherface, they might have demonized midwives

(43:32):
as witches who kill babies, right?
Yeah, it totally makes sense.
where that comes from.
Yeah, it totally makes sense.
Now, is there any kind of symbolismwith the silver cup that gets
Or am I jumping ahead here?
Because once they Establish thatSamuel disappeared under Thomas's care.

(43:54):
You've already got the hintthat she may be a witch.
Take us to when Catherine blames Thomasin.
Catherine's the mom.
She blames Thomasin of,
Yes.
uh, stealing that.
It was a silver cup.
Was that right?
Yes.
Yeah.
It turns out the father had stolen it orhad taken it and traded it so that they

(44:14):
could survive and the corn was dying.
These, this family is not doing realwell with their banishment, again,
you have that isolation you talkedabout and it's like, that's what it
meant in those days to be isolated.
It meant death.
I mean, whether you have a witch huntingyou down or not, being a family alone out

(44:35):
there in the wilderness, trying to kind ofmake their own little seldom settlement.
Mm hmm.
impossible anyway, but, um, but I do wantto point out like the corn was failing.
Okay.
A lot of times in the new settlementsin New England, corn was failing
because didn't have corn in England.

(44:56):
When they mention corn in older texts,they're actually just talking about grain.
So they're talking about oats and barleyand things that they had in England.
When they came to America tosettle here, corn was a new thing.
It was a new kind of grain.
And the natives, uh, the indigenouspeople of the area always grew
corn with beans and squash.

(45:17):
They call them the three sisters.
shout out to Braiding Sweetgrass.
This is straight from that book.
So if you haven't read BraidingSweetgrass, I totally recommend it.
But they talk about thethree sisters, right?
So they're not growing corn appropriate,like, the way it's supposed to be.
There's not enough nitratesin the soil without beans to
be able to cultivate corn.

(45:39):
So, Their corn is failing, they're gonnastarve, has to sell the silver cup,
um, symbology wise, silver cup or chaliceis a very, uh, a balance of, it's,
it's a very feminine character, okay?
So the, the silver cup that's missingis, you could call it its own character.

(46:01):
It's the chalice, or the symbolof the womb, and silver, the
symbol of the moon, female energy.
So, I mean, you could almost replace itfor every time they talk about that silver
cup, they're talking about femininity.
Ah, I love that.
So that's great symbolism thereand greatly explained I got a

(46:23):
whole other take on this moviebecause you mentioned the corn.
I'm gonna talk to you right here, and I'mgonna tell you what the actual meaning
of this movie is, and there's no witch,there's nothing if you pay attention
in the background, the corn is rotting.
It's got a, it's got a funguscalled ergot now, ergot.

(46:47):
Urgot is something from,from that, that is a, uh, uh,
basically, uh, infestation of corn.
Now here's what it'll dowithout people knowing.
And I, you can see the corndeteriorating in the background
and I know it's got Urgot.
It will, it will get basically, it will,this is, this is the symptoms that you

(47:09):
can have from Urgot is convulsions,muscle spasms, vomiting, hallucinations.
You could watch this whole movie andthink, Hey, they're getting poisoned
by the corn and they're hallucinating.
I'd love for people to watchit again and have that in mind.
And then it's not a horror movie, it'sA whole other kind of horror movie.

(47:29):
I like to think there's a witch there.
I like to think there's a witch there,but I did want to point that out because
the corn rotting in the background,I think there's something to that.
And ergot is that fungus that getsinto people's nervous systems and
can cause you to have hallucinations.
Convulsions, all the pain, vomiting,all the stuff that we see later.

(47:51):
So what do you think about that?
That little theory I put outthere, the, the corn being fungus.
that makes perfect sense too.
I like that, that take on it because Iwas going to ask you, did you think that
Thomasin was a witch the entire time?
Or is this like the, um, the goodold story of, uh, I wasn't a witch
until you made me one kind of a thing?

(48:12):
Like in Jane Doe.
Now, I like the theory about the cornbeing poisoned and having fungus and them
just hallucinating, but I'm a witch fan.
So I'm going to say there's a witch there.
I'm gonna say that she's a little moreon the witch side than Jane Doe was.
Before Jane Doe became a witch.

(48:33):
I think Thomasin might havebeen at least interested in what
witchcraft, what was going on.
That kind of stuff.
You see it later with BlackPhillip, the goat, like all
these things are coming together.
And I think Thomasin might have,she might have made a pact.
Uh, I don't know.
What do you think?
Well, I think there's somethingactually to the twins having made

(48:59):
some bargain they weren't aware of.
I mean, they're just children.
They're, they're playing and having fun.
And if a goat talks to them, theymight be like, okay, whatever
you say, Black Phillip, the goat.
And the little girl Mercy is singingsongs about Black Phillip, their
goat, the entire movie at all.
And she's like, I'm a witch.
I'm a witch.

(49:20):
Clickety clackety, clickety clackety.
Black Philip, that's areference to Baphomet.
I mean, that's Baphomet, which isthe, you know, devil reincarnate, I
guess, if you want to call it that, but
Mm hmm.
the lyrics in the song, Black Philipis the lions from the lion's den.
Like there's some really, really vividstuff in there that we'll see it later.

(49:43):
We see slaughtered lambs in thestable, black Phillips standing there.
All this is in the climax.
Yeah,
The lyrics to that song are justdisturbing, unnerving, all that.
And the kids are singing them.
Once again, you got thekids doing the dirty work.
Making me feel Like that's
they're not aware of what they're doingor what's going on, but I think they play

(50:04):
a part in what, what ends up happening.
Like how, how the events play out.
Cause from the very beginning, andlet me just give a shout out to
all the oldest daughters out there.
I'm an oldest daughter.
Okay.
And, um, I just want allthe oldest daughters.
I see you.
Okay, here's Thomason doing her best.

(50:25):
She's out there like cleaningout the stables and the twins
are running amok being goofy andsilly and not minding her at all.
And then mom comes out and is like,Thomason, aren't you taking care of them?
Why aren't you doing this?
Why aren't you doing that?
help your father clean up.
And then she's like, okay, um, and she'strying her best to do what she's being

(50:47):
told and trying to take care of everybody.
And all she gets is criticism.
Mom's on her case all the time.
Mom's accusing her of stealing the cup.
Mom is always like, when Mercy'ssinging songs, Thomason's like, hush,
I can't, I can't stand your songs.
And instead of, you know,admonishing Mercy, um, Catherine,

(51:09):
the mom, is Like, stop.
Thomason, hush.
You know, like, I'mlike, poor Thomason, man.
She just has, like, nocontrol of her life.
Let's go back for Thomasin.
Let's go back to the Mercy andJonas, the twins, the kids.
Are they twins?
Yeah,
Yes.

(51:29):
yeah.
I called them twins a couple of times.
Yeah.
I
And it's, you might be on to somethingthere because there's a point, there's
a part in there where Mercy and Jonasare unable to finish the Lord's Prayer.
During the witch,
note of that.
yes, during the witch hunts, as youknow, during the witch hunts in Colonial
America, it's widely believed that awitch could not finish the Lord's Prayer.

(51:50):
That's why the family gets soupset when Jonas and Mercy stop.
So, maybe they didn't make it.
who stopped.
was trying to say the Lord's Prayer,and it only stopped because the
twins were like, I can't, I can't,and then they freak out, right?
Yeah, yeah, they, nobody couldfinish it, really, I guess.
So, were they all witches?

(52:11):
Did they all make a pact?
What happened there?
Hmm, may have to watch this again, huh?
Cause,
There's a lot going on.
Yeah.
we're not even, we haven't even gottento like, where we're talking about the
movie, like, Caleb goes on a hunt, Caleb,they go into the woods, and then, is, do
we see the rabbit here, or is that later?

(52:32):
um, I believe they saw the rabbitwhen Caleb and the dad go out hunting
right.
This is, this is when he, he, hesees the seductress, which she's
Yeah.
trying to get him in.
She would have got me.
I'm going to tell you now, ifI would have been a 13 year old
boy out in the woods, I'll come
but again, this is bringing up theideas of, of sin natural, right?

(52:56):
So Thomasin's body is developingnaturally like a woman's body does.
And, uh, sure she doesn't fit intoher shift as well as she used to.
Um, her brother Caleb has noticed.
I mean, He's a young boy,but it is what it is.
here we have this like, again, contrastbetween like what is natural and

(53:17):
like what is like, just her livingher life, and the sin of being a
woman and being desirable and beinga maiden, right, in the of womanhood.
So here, like, Caleb comes out andhe gets tempted by this, which in the
form of a maiden of a very desirable.

(53:41):
woman
and buck something.
Is that a word we could use?
I think.
He
or kid who didn't stand a chance.
didn't.
He didn't.
And then he comes backhome in a delirious state.
You got the possession.
This thing's disturbing.
This scene right here was rough.
And this movie's onlyan hour and a half long.

(54:04):
Did it not feel like it waslike four or five hours?
Yeah.
Long.
There's a lot of pieces to it.
A
And
of like, I
when he is
basically convulsing and whateverelse you want to call that.
Have you ever seen anything like,like that, like that happen in person?

(54:26):
have not, I have heard storiesof people who are like, Oh,
I've witnessed a possession.
I've witnessed, you know, this or that.
Um, you know, however you decideto believe, whether it's a
psychological episode or a spiritualpossession of a demon, I don't,
you know, whatever you believe,

(54:46):
I just have to say this kid.
Is amazing!
I mean, that scene was so, whoa, his,he must have had a great acting coach
getting him ready for this scene andhaving him just don't hold back, right?
Don't hold back, let it all out,because the emotion was so powerful.

(55:10):
Now that kid's name is HarveyScrimshaw, and he was a, a
serious powerhouse in that movie.
They all were Thomason playedby, uh, Anya Taylor Joy.
That's, this is her debut.
This is her debut.
She's gone on to have a,
her.
uh, she's a, she, she puts on agreat performance in this movie.

(55:33):
Everybody does.
We already talked aboutthe graveley voice of
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And
she.
to say about the mother too, but I willwait until we get to the, the ending, um,
and her ending and how that plays out.
But she's amazing and everythingshe does, I like her too.
I want to talk about the rabbit.

(55:54):
Tell me about the rabbits because,uh, Caleb and his father go into the
woods to hunt also and here we go.
We got a rabbit here.
Now what's the, what's the symbolismof hairs in mythology here?
well, in Celtic lore, thisis from my druid, uh, deck.
Um, they're, they symbolize rebirth
Hmm.
Hmm.

(56:16):
Um.
Now, a lot of folklore around witches,uh, not from a pagan perspective, but
from like general how we view witches,they have familiars, or they have, um,
or they can, um, shapeshift, right?
There's a lot of that goingon in folklore as well.
Like, they can shapeshift intoanimals and things like that.

(56:38):
So, the hare shows up in this movie atcertain points, I think, where it's like
there was a hare then there was a witch.
Hmm.
I just listened to a story this morningthat comes from a Welsh storytelling,
um, where a guy is staying in a hoteland he cut, he, uh, sees these cats

(56:59):
trying to steal from him out of his bagor out of his wallet and he cuts one
of them on the paw and then the nextmorning two of the ladies who run the
inn he's staying at, she has a hurt hand.
Ooh.
Those kind of stories you hear a lotlike where it's like, they're in the,
you know, you never see the hair and thewitch in the same place at the same time.

(57:20):
So I don't know maybe shape shiftingis going on maybe that's what we're
meant to believe here, but folklore theyreally are associated with like Ostera
and the rebirth, like, The hair andthe eggs, which are Easter Bunny type
So tell me, if somebody pullsthis card in a tarot reading, what
does this say about that person?

(57:40):
I don't
Um, the way that I would read that,uh, and, you know, I have the, the
guidebook and I can read what that says.
But for me personally, I would say abouta new beginning for you or, um, a rebirth.
Uh, that's kind of like in Thomason'sexperience here, she's going through a

(58:03):
big change from childhood into womanhood.
And what that could mean for her iscoming into her power as a witch, right?
She's this innocent, godly girl.
She definitely wants to follow in,you know, what's right and good.
But man, that's just not working for her.

(58:23):
know.
I mean,
It's not bringing her anything.
Criticism, usually.
So this is kind of her transitioninto being like, and you see that
when she speaks up to her dad, whenshe's like, Hey, listen, you're the
biggest hypocrite I've ever met.
She would not have saidthat earlier in the movie.
She's very devoted, very, um, submissiveto her father, her mother, to authority.

(58:50):
And then it's like, now wait a minute,I have something to say, right?
It's like her, it's likea rebellious teenager.
It's like she hit the rebelliousteenager phase and instead of
Instead of cursing she cursed other peoplelike it's that's what it looks like to me.

(59:11):
Um, She made a full blowntransformation in the movie.
I want to say almost from innocenceI think there was a little bit there.
There's a little hint of something there.
Um,
then you could just saythat's human nature, too.
You could say, there's a littlebit of that in all of us.
And that's what,

(59:32):
yeah.
and that's what I think, becauseshe, yeah, you could, you could say
there's a little bit of that in allof us, because we all conjure up
whatever we want in our own ways.
She was doing it in her own way, and
the, the climax of the movie is whenall the family turns on each other.
Not only scenes of possession, paranoia,

(59:54):
it's the good old fashionedwitchcraft right here.
And then you got the, the, uh,
See what Thomas said about Philip?
That's, to me, the masterclassin filmmaking and building
dread and suspense.
Because when she finally sells that book!

(01:00:17):
Like, you know, That's it,you know, no going back.
Like that's, that's it.
Yeah.
What did you think about that?
What about Black Phillip overall?
Tell us about Black Phillipand the, the goat lore.
I already said it's bafflement,symbolism, and him speaking to Thomason.

(01:00:37):
The twins said they spoke to him.
That's what got this whole thing kindof started earlier in the movie, in the
plot, was that goat stable attack wherethe twins said, Black Phillip told us,
you know, Like, what is, what is BlackPhillip, and what is his role in this?
Is this just a goat, or isthere something in that goat?
Yeah.
Well, again, like animals a familiar toa witch or to, there's a lot of folklore

(01:01:02):
in that and it can be the goat, the cats,um, birds, ravens, you see the raven,
Yeah.
right?
We'll, we'll talk about that in asecond, but Black Phillip, I mean,
this is just another, again, shapeshifting, he shape shifts into, we're
supposed to believe the devil, right?

(01:01:23):
the devil and that's the devil's book
I mean, this is more like, uh, whenyou look into kind of the symbology in,
in, in Satanism, the goat and thingslike that, how, and the ram having to
do with something to do with the devil.
I'm not as familiar with that folklorebecause to me, it's more just about all
of the animals being of the natural world.

(01:01:45):
Right.
But, uh, I will say that in general,that whole, um, witch in the
woods, the boy being bewitched,um, The goats being black Phillip
Um, signing the devil's book andthen one of his coven, one of

(01:02:07):
his, followers or whatever it is.
me, this is just an entire movie madeout of the fears that the Puritan
people in New England had at the time.
Right?
Most of us now don't believethat any of that was going on.
Hmm.
I, I doubt in the time period, there wasa lot of women who were like, Yeah, kind

(01:02:31):
of just feel like it'd be fun to go inthe woods naked and run around and dance
in the woods and sign the devil's book.
Like, this would be so fun to me.
But this movie is kind of likebringing every fear that all
that folklore had together.
And the hold it had on people andbringing it into a movie like what
if it was real like what if thishappened, this is what it would

(01:02:53):
look like, right, so that the goat.
is the devil.
He's the one that'sbeen whispering to them.
It also brings the fear of, there's a veryreligious connotation in all this, which
is that the devil and the evilness ofall this going on could happen to anyone.
You could be as faithful and trueto your faith as possible, like this

(01:03:19):
family was seemingly in the beginning.
You know, the mother says thatat one point she's I was so
close to God and Christ's love.
I could feel it.
I could, you know, I could relish it.
I could, I could, I never evenneeded the love of a husband
because I had this love of Christ.
And I've lost that.

(01:03:39):
I've lost my faith.
And, um, she's confessing, you know,but it's like, there's a realization
here that you can be as good.
I use air quotes for thoseof you who can't see me.
Good as possible, right, and stillbe susceptible to evil that could

(01:04:00):
come in and kill your whole family.
Right, and it does.
And you'll learn how to playas a man, except Thomas.
And then she, treks out naked.
And so, the rest of the batchis, which, uh, Hey, I mean,
you know, it's not, but she's,

(01:04:25):
Trees.
Basically, witch festival, and
I
every, every year, April 30th to May1st, that's Hexenacht, and that's
Valperkishnacht, and what happens is allthe witches go up to Brocken Mountain
and they get naked and they dance andthey have a wild orgy with the devil.

(01:04:46):
Now this is, this is real.
So how many places around here havenaked witches running around the woods?
Is this a common thingor is this, what is this?
personally don't know of any, but whatthe, the ceremony of that, or what doing
that would be, would now symbolize anyonewho, you know, Is coming into their own

(01:05:12):
power and leaving the expectations andthe idea that tamed is good and proper.
But that letting your naturalself be loved and embraced
by the energy of the world.
That that's kind of what that symbolizes.
Yeah.
about dancing with the devilor signing the devil's book.

(01:05:35):
In fact, that would beAlmost patriarchal, right?
That would be like, okay,I'm giving myself up to what?
Another male figure.
I'm his slave now.
Most of the time what it symbolizes isThis is me shedding off all of the masks,
all of the expectations of society,um, my clothing, and being able to just

(01:05:58):
embrace the natural world, the woods,the fire, the elements, the dancing, the
music, the drumming, and just be ableto embrace being and authentically me.
myself, on my own sovereignty, right?
Yeah.
There's some truth in therethough, is what you're saying.
Like, I mean, there's the, thelore of the four naked witches.

(01:06:21):
That's, that's part of the German ValPergishnacht, the four sorceresses seen
on a brothel, all that kind of stuff.
And then the, the movie, The Witchitself, the, the, the, the ending
when she starts floating away.

(01:06:43):
Did you find that as a happy ending?
Because you are a witch.
A little bit, yeah.
Yeah, I have to say, I was like,alright, sounds good to me.
And a lot of that could have to dowith some of the hallucinogens and
mushrooms and some of the things that,um, that witches, uh, participated in.
Or people who were called witches.

(01:07:05):
Um, it, yeah, it's not like, thewitch is flying on a broomstick.
Some of, some people believethat that folklore came from.
The fact that they would rub theirbroomstick with, um, hallucinogenic
mushrooms and things like that,and then go flying, right?
Because in their mind, they were flying.

(01:07:25):
Sounds like a good time to me.
I mean, I try that out.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And to me, this is just like, again, ifit was a symbol, it would be, um, Thomason
going, like, okay, my family's dead.
Like, what else am I going to do?
Sure.
I'll sign your book.
I mean
going out into the woodsand being like, I'm free.
Right?
Like, I'm now floating with these women.

(01:07:47):
These women have nobodytelling them what to do.
I mean, if you take thedevil out of the equation.
I don't have anybody tellingme what to do anymore.
I don't have expectations to follow.
I am my own person.
I'm in charge of myself and I'm free.
And the floating feeling islike coming into her power.

(01:08:08):
Uh, to me, we couldcompare Thomasin to, um,
the main character Dani in Midsommar, whenshe goes through all this hell, and at
the very end, it's only her standing andshe gets that little smirk on her face.
Yes.
Thomasin, at the end, when shefloats off, that's her smirk.

(01:08:31):
That's her smirk on her face.
I think.
She got a happy ending.
So maybe I'm wrong about A24 movies.
Maybe they do have happy endings.
Who is it happy for, you know?
Yeah.
What's your final thought on The Witch?
I think that the threadof both of these movies.

(01:08:51):
is again the um, the idea of thewildness and wilderness, And being
able to um, ask the question, is itour job or is our purpose to tame
that wildness or embrace it, right?
is what's found in the woodsactually evil or is it just a Our

(01:09:16):
own shadows, our own natural selfthat we need to confront and face.
Mmm,
And maybe for too long we've beenbelieving that it's something that
is to be shied away from, avoided,it's evil, it's dangerous, it
shouldn't be, um, with at all.

(01:09:36):
And maybe it's time for each andevery one of us to go into those woods
whether physically or metaphorically, butinto the woods and confront your shadows.
I love that.
That's a great final thought.
My final thoughts on The Witch.
The Witch was, it's incredible.
It was an incredible watch.
It is a exhausting watch.

(01:09:58):
It's It's a miserable watch, like,and I mean that in the best way,
Robert Eggers, if you're listening.
It's a miserable watch, but I loved it.
Like, I know when I put that movie onever again, that I'm gonna be depressed,
I'm gonna be sad, I'm gonna be down.
But I better finish it, because yeah,I kind of get happy at the end when

(01:10:19):
Thomason wins, because to me, she wins.
I want to throw this out there aboutRobert Eggers, he did an interview and
he was talking about the best behavedand worst behaved of the actors and
animals, and the hare, the raven,and the horse, all easy to work with.
Black Phillip was a bastard.

(01:10:41):
Yeah, he looks like it.
The shot we have with, um, the dad andhe's wrestling him, that wasn't scripted.
You can't script a scenelike that with a goat.
There he is, there's Black Phillip.
You can't script a scene whereyou're wrestling a goat's horns.
That was crazy.
I can't believe, I hope he got paid.
I hope he got paid extra for that.
But, love this movie.
It was another, to me, New genredefining type of movies, sub genre,

(01:11:07):
whatever you want to call it.
Topek, Topekian folk horror slashwitchcraft, all that kind of stuff.
Can't wait to see this Nosferatu moviethat Robert Eggers is putting out.
And anything else A24 has.
We've got another A24 moviein this series coming up.
Hereditary.
You've never seen that one.
I can't wait for that.
No, I haven't seen it yet.

(01:11:27):
I'm just, I'm
Oh, you wait.
You wait.
Oh my God, Courtney, we're back.
Whoo!
Or maybe I should do this.
Maybe I should do this.
Yeah, that's it.
One episode we've had here though with.
who can't see me, I wasstanding in the corner.

(01:11:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
As she was recreating the iconiclast shot of the Blair Witch there.
That's a nightmare inducingshot though, really it is.
Like you see that andyou're like, oh shit.
Like,
It's so fast.
is, it is.
back and rewind it and watch it again justto make sure I saw what I thought I saw.
but those two movies rightthere, the Witch, the Vivic,

(01:12:11):
Mm
and the Player Witch.
I love those two.
I love those two flicks right there.
And that's gonna be a tough vote.
I don't know where my about to go between.
Yeah,
All right, people, so you gotta get outthere, you gotta vote, you gotta decide.
Out of those two movies,which one did you like best?
And vote for all of the onesin the past episodes as well.
yeah.
you vote so we knowwhat are your favorites.

(01:12:32):
And, and, and I gotta get, givemyself a shout out for having the
A 24 limited edition shirt on here.
'cause the Vivi was a 24
Yeah.
Oh Edge, edge Edgert.
Was that him?
Was he the one that did it?
Man, he's got a movie Nosferatucoming out Christmas this year too.
We may have to break that one down.
Yeah.

(01:12:52):
I'm all for it.
But, until then, we'regetting closer, Kortn.
October 26th, Novel Daybreak byCrescent Communities presents
The Witch Movie Project, livepodcast taping and movie screening.
And costume contest.
Don't forget.
Land of a Thousand Hills coffee shopright there at Novel is gonna give us,

(01:13:15):
uh, uh, prizes for the costume contest.
Yes!
I've got gift cards, so if you love coffeeand drinks at Land of a Thousand Hills,
you're gonna wanna win this contest.
I
They've got seasonal stuff going on rightnow too, like different witch type drinks.
This is perfect for us.
the chai and cider yesterday.
So good.
So good.
What was that one called?
You remember what that was called?

(01:13:36):
I think it was just called Chai and Cider.
We need to find out who, who came
but I was trying to find something good.
up with those names.
We need to talk to, wasit their own over there?
Land of a Thousand Hills, I wonder?
not sure.
I have to ask her.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or some,
message.
they got a bunch of great, uh,baristas over there though.

(01:13:57):
That could have been some of those,some of those kids working over there.
They got their creative.
I love those people over there.
I've been doing my Tarot forTips events on Sinner Sundays
Yeah.
and they're amazing.
They always, they like to give me afree drink if I go over there, um, to
read cards and they, um, gave people15 percent off their drink order for
me reading cards for getting a reading.
So I love them over there.
I think they love me.

(01:14:17):
Yeah, they do.
it.
Yeah, they do.
That's incredible.
Let's give a special, special, specialshout out to all of our sponsors.
Novel Daybreak by Crescent Communities,Prism Healing, Live Cake Parties,
Pure Sweat and Float Studios,South Jordan, Ride the Wave Media.
We're all here.
We're, we're all helping outwith the Witch Movie Project.

(01:14:40):
I'm proud of this project.
This thing's really rolled on and, andwe're, we're already talking about there
was some more movies down, down the road.
So we'll
yeah.
We're
tease that a little more.
train going.
We'll tease that a little more inthe following episodes, but until
then, we'll see you guys next week.

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The Witch Movie Project Ep 5 - 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999) vs 'The VVitch' (2015)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Witch Movie Project Ep 5 - 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999) vs 'The VVitch' (2015)