WITCH HUNT (March 2021)

WITCH HUNT

(March 2021)

/ ‘wiCH, hunt/, Noun

1. A search for, and subsequent persecution of persons accused of witchcraft.
2. A campaign directed against a person, or group, holding unorthodox or unpopular views, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.

Witch Hunt’s harrowing opening quickly tips the viewer off to the fact that they’re now in the middle of an alternate history:
 
A world where witches are real, and are hounded by the Bureau of Witch Investigations (the BWI), modern-day witch hunters all too ready to strike a match so they can “stop hysteria and uphold the law”;
 
A world where the threat of Proposition 6, the Witch List Act (AKA Prop 6) looms.
Its full title: the Control, Regulate, and Restrict Potential Witchcraft Act, meant to “restrict the rights of blood relatives of convicted witches”;
 
A world where the particular combination of one’s genes potentially carries a death sentence.
 
Working against this system is Elizabeth Mitchell’s Martha Goode, a widow who helps smuggle witches to safety.
In this world’s parlance, Martha is a “harborer”, which makes her life and that of her children a daily tightrope of secrets and subterfuge.
 
“Did you see the way that they looked at me? How am I supposed to control something that I’m not even allowed to practice?
“And why does it have to be bad?
“I’m not bad…
“I’m not bad!”
 
Witch Hunt is writer/director Elle Callahan’s sophomore feature, on the heels of her excellent ¡Qué horror! 2019 title, Head Count.
It’s a brilliant and powerful follow-up that brings a very different kind of horror from that of Head Count, to the screen.
 
A piece like Witch Hunt can be a particularly potent narrative because, like comic book tales of the X-Men, it’s the kind of story where the persecuted minority--whether witches or mutants--can be swapped out for any number of real-life discriminated groups.
It’s a fictional reflection of the hardships that some people--through no fault or choice of their own--are subjected to, simply due to the color of their skin, or their gender.
 
It’s the kind of troubling, uncomfortable horror that critiques the very real-life systems we all find ourselves slaved to.
It’s the kind of horror that asks, So then, what are you going to do about it?
 
“So, vote ‘Yes’ on Prop 6, and keep our streets safe from anyone with magic in their blood.
“No magic is good magic.”
 
(Witch Hunt OS courtesy of impawards.com.)