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The VVitch

Return of the Repressed:
Robert Eggers’ The VVitch (2015) and The Right to A Secular Education
By Elif Karslıoğlu, Fatma Nur Kuş and Süeda Sancaktar

The VVitch is a horror film that encapsulates the misfortunes of a puritan family in colonial America who lead a modest way of living before everything in their lives shifts drastically. At the beginning of the film, we see a man being charged and banished from society by the court for his religious beliefs. The family has to leave the colony and live inside a forest where an evil being finds them in total isolation. The family quickly becomes prey to a self-imposed tyrannical and theocratic rule. Due to their isolation from society, they begin to exhibit deficiencies in common sense and instantly believe the baseless products of their younger children’s imagination, i.e. that their daughter, Thomasin, might indeed be a witch. The entire family bar Thomasin start to dissociate from reality, becoming more and more superstitious under the influence of extreme religious beliefs. They begin to view Thomasin’s burgeoning adolescence as a sexual threat for their religion; silenced and demonized by the rest of the family, Thomasin becomes the scapegoat.
The audience witnesses the dangers of total isolation and of irrational and invasive practice of religion. As exemplified by both Thomasin and her brother Caleb, the more one is oppressed, the more they tend to act out. Repressed thoughts and emotions tend to come to light in a more deviant way. Thomasin’s situation also represents the shattered value of equality: we see the victimization of women by oppressive structures caused by rigid domestic rule. The collapse of the entire family is indeed a self-fulfilling prophecy: Thomasin has no other choice but to believe the accusations against her and join the witches. It is her family that molds her into becoming a witch by their constant oppression and by not offering her a balanced secular education.
Enriched with supernatural horror elements, this movie represents the necessity of a healthy society that upholds the value of gender equality and secular education, and is wary of the dangers of isolation, alienation and exile.