It’s me, Burton Fisher. You keep saying there are no limits on the Horror genre; however, if there are no limits, then every film could be a Horror film. That means Never Been Kissed, Carol, and Inside Out are all as much Horror films as The Exorcist or The Texas Chainsaw Masscre. And yet you never write on films like that; you always write on films predominantly classified by specific definitions of Horror.

All genres–including Science Fiction, Western, and Romantic Comedy–must have workable, but malleable, limits or they can’t be genres.

As to The Witch, i mostly agree with you. It was definitely about specific evil beings as they are objectively presented in the film. However, it is also about the nature of Sin and free will, and how those human dynamics can expose oneself to evil. The theological question proposed by the Calvinist setting and the father’s Calvinist predestinational beliefs is whether that sin and sinfulness led to the finale, or they were all doomed toward that direction by their fallen nature…as espoused by the father.

Anyway, cool talking about an excellent film.

The argument that The Witch somehow isn’t a horror film is so silly to me. The horror genre is an umbrella for countless different types of films, whether they deal with evil beings, psychosis, or shark-octopus hybrid creatures. To place limits on the genre and refuse to acknowledge that films like The Witch are a part of it is doing the genre a huge disservice.

In any event. It seems we totally interpreted the movie in different ways. The movie I saw was very much about evil beings, rather than delusional psychosis. If you’re asking me, it 100% committed to its own premise, but I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.

Hype is created by nobody but the individual viewer. Just cause a lot of people love a movie that a certain viewer doesn’t dig as much, it doesn’t mean they “over-hyped” it. Nobody should ever go into a film with a certain set of expectations, and a movie certainly shouldn’t ever be faulted if it doesn’t live up to whatever those expectations might be. That’s my stance on that whole issue, so I get incredibly annoyed when people throw around words like “hype” and “over-hyped.”