Masters of Horror Magic: Ed's Favourite Witches Halloween Movies
Throughout history, witches and those suspected of witchcraft have been subject to unspeakable horrors thanks to narratives imposed upon them by the patriarchy. So fearful the establishment was of the idea that society, particularly women, might find power and wisdom within themselves without looking to the church for approval. The oracle, the wise woman, the village healer, and midwife, became the evil witch, sent among us to corrupt us. They became the seductive succubi, feasting upon the souls of men, or the grotesque caricatures of the aged crone; to look upon a witch was to see one’s own mortality reflected and despair.
Witches became the folktales that have since haunted our imagination. They embody fear of the unknown, suspicion of the other, and anxieties of powerlessness in the face of those who would seek to control us. Yet I feel deep down society knows the truth, an ancient memory lingers, we know the witches are the scapegoats. They are symbols of rebellion against the true powers that would seek to subdue us. They are feminine rage, divine strength, and forbidden knowledge.
Horror cinema has seized upon the patriarchal archetype, turning witches into figures both terrifying and seductive. The witch has become one of horror’s most enduring and adaptable icons, but not only because we fear her. A successful witch often spells misery for those who get in her way. We might recoil at her dreadful deeds, but there is a part of us, the part of us that remembers her true self, that delights and wills her rebellions to succeed.
Below are ten films that show just how potent the witch archetype remains in shaping the horror genre, damning us all in our enjoyment of her wickedness this Halloween.
“The witch is the monster we never shake—sometimes a devil, sometimes a savior, always a mirror.”
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1. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Rosemary’s Baby transports you to another world, and not the shadowy forests of folklore. It’s camp and kitsch, and of its time. There’s retro fashion, coiffed hairdos, and the familiar urban setting of a 1960s Manhattan.
Roman Polanski’s classic brings witchcraft home, obscured by the mundane. Here you can find newlyweds, homemaking, kindly busybody neighbours, and a pregnancy. The witches here are not pointy-hatted caricatures but a cabal of urbane, seemingly harmless elders.
The real horror is the erosion of Rosemary’s autonomy as her neighbours manipulate her body and her future. Gaslighting may be a modern term, but Rosemary’s Baby might be the perfect expression of the definition. This film still chills because it blurs the line between paranoia and reality, making us question who controls our lives. The devastation doesn’t come from Rosemary’s fear of losing her sanity, but in proving she was right all along.
“Boys, keep off the moors.
Stick to the roads, and the best of luck.”
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2. The Witch (2016)
Robert Eggers’ meticulously crafted debut is a Puritanical nightmare, the story of a family that has sacrificed everything to their judgmental Christian God, yet finds itself banished and abandoned despite their devotion. The family lives in denial of their sins, lacking compassion for their own failings and the mistakes of others.
Only Thomasin, in prayer, honestly identifies with her fallible humanity. Perhaps this is the instigating factor that, in lacking the love of their chosen god, attracts the interest of another. What ensues is a slow-burn descent into madness and the supernatural.
The witch is both real and metaphorical: a genuine presence in the woods and a projection of the family’s fractured faith. It’s a slow implosion of a family poisoned by religion, isolation, and paranoia. That final shot of Thomasin? Equal parts horrifying and weirdly triumphant, a middle finger to shame, guilt, and the 1630s New England patriarchy.
“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”
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3. Hereditary (2013)
Ari Aster’s nightmare is often remembered for its shocking visuals (can a horror movie have too many decapitations, attempted or otherwise?), it’s also remembered for the abject grief that pervades the entire film. Ari Aster’s debut, at its core, is a story of inescapable fate. A fate guided by a coven in the light of day. This is a coven spanning generations, masked by niceties and family ties, pulling at the strings of fate with devastating patience.
Here, the horror comes not from the inevitability of it all, making Hereditary one of the most suffocating witch stories ever told. You don’t escape this coven. You inherit it.
Few films make the idea of being chosen feel so hopelessly damning.
“What makes you so different anyway?”
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4. Weapons (2025)
Brought to life by Zach Cregger, of Barbarian (2022) fame, this recent entry threads witchcraft into a modern narrative of power and violence. Aunt Gladys’ spells, mysterious lore, and iconic make-up are a facade hiding a metaphor for systemic corruption and cycles of cruelty.
I have waxed lyrical about the innate empathy we’re capable of when it comes to the witch archetype. In Weapons, I confess, it’s a moot point.
Aunt Gladys is a parasite, a reflection of the monstrousness already rooted in society, devouring the innocent and unsuspecting to permit the extension of its own miserable, rotten life. Weapons is messy and unsettling. The wicked joy of this movie comes from the children’s retribution, making the experience well worth the discomfort. Sadly, it’s a retribution that comes with a cost to pay.
Expect to see Aunt Gladys at a drag bar near you this Halloween.
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5. Suspiria (1977)
Dario Argento’s original is a Technicolor fever dream with witches draped in psychedelic light and candy-coloured gore. The 1977 version is like jumping into the pages of a fairytale and coming to the hard, fast realisation of how horrific those worlds can be. Anyone, like myself, who has attended dance school might tell you the real-life experience is quite similar; the idea that the faculty might be a coven of malevolent witches isn’t such a stretch either.
The witches of the Tanz Dance Academy are less about subtle scheming and more about sheer sensory overload. It’s garish, loud, and absolutely gorgeous, like drowning in neon blood while Goblin’s prog-rock score hammers you into submission. Like a terrible drug trip, we experience what our protagonist, Suzy Bannion, experiences, and we fight for our lives alongside her.
but by broken minds.”
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6. Suspiria (2018)
Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I can’t have one Suspiria without the other.
Suspiria (2018) isn’t a remake, but a retelling, one of two radically different versions of the same story. Taken together, they demonstrate the witch’s adaptability, from lurid fairytale to grounded, intellectual horror. Luca Guadagnino’s reimagining takes a slower, denser approach; it’s a grim dissertation on power with political grit, grounding the witchcraft in post-war Berlin.
The Markos Academy swaps fairy-tale colours for muted Berlin greys. Its coven is in the midst of tearing itself apart with ritualistic power struggles, and its unfortunate students are caught in the crossfire. Much more cerebral than its counterpart, those who live for mood and atmosphere, or a well-executed period piece, will fall in love. Fans of body horror will be rewarded for their concentration with doses of some of the most brutal examples ever put to screen.
Darkness binds the gifted, a great tagline for overachievers everywhere.
you make yourself in the image of its creator.”
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7. The Love Witch (2016)
Anna Biller’s The Love Witch is a 1960s Technicolor dream, its witchcraft staged in saturated hues with red lips, turquoise eyeshadow, and velvet drapes. At its centre is Elaine: narcissist and sociopath, villain and victim, menace to the patriarchy and symptom of it alike. Cell phones and modern cars betray the 1960s aesthetic, telling us this world is Elaine’s dream. It is the female gaze weaponised, a hyper-feminine defence against the abuse she has suffered and a filter that obscures her own crimes. The film dazzles because it refuses to separate satire from sincerity. It is both critique and enchantment, equal parts sweets and poison.
The Love Witch’s true horror lies not in occult rituals, but in the contradictions of Elaine’s existence as a woman. She wields real power, yet embodies the patriarchal ideal so completely that she becomes trapped by her own performance. The Love Witch is both empowered woman and femme fatale, with a life consumed by the desperate search for Mr. Right, no matter the cost.
The Love Witch will love you to death.
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8. Carrie (1976)
Carrie White, sheltered and scorned, becomes both victim and avenger when her telekinetic powers ignite, yet it’s the cruelty of her peers and the suffocating control of her mother that is truly terrifying. In the infamous climax, Brian De Palma frames a tragedy disguised as a spectacle: slow-motion humiliation, the bucket tilting, the blood, the laughter… fire and vengeance. We dread it, we cheer it, we mourn it. When Carrie unleashes her wrath, horror finds its purest metaphor for adolescence.
De Palma’s Carrie isn’t just a high school horror; it’s a fairy tale gone rancid. Instead of a dress transformed by magic, we have a dress transformed by pig’s blood. The realisation of Carrie’s true self isn’t an unimpeachable princess, it’s the embodiment of inescapable vengeance and rage. The real tragedy, however, is found in how she succumbs to the abuse and bullying from those around her, at a time in life when she finds true power and is so painfully close to an escape.
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9. The Craft (1996)
Andrew Fleming’s Post-Hughes Teen Wave iconic witchy horror was the catalyst and inspiration for WB heavy hitters Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) and Charmed (1998). Fans will recognise familiar tropes from both shows. Found-family, witchcraft as friendship, high school melodrama, and wish fulfilment, it’s all here. The 90s teen-goth aesthetic is nostalgic: plaid skirts, chokers, black lipstick, and flickering candles. Despite the familiarity, there’s a dark undercurrent bubbling beneath the sisterhood of locker room spells and levitating slumber parties.
Four misfits bind themselves together, finding power in their pain, but power is a tricky thing. Intoxicating, corrupting, and never equally shared. Solidarity curdles into rivalry, with Nancy’s feral charisma pitted against Sarah’s hesitant morality.
The Craft endures not just as supernatural horror, but as a chronicle of the allure of belonging and the dangers of radicalisation. Of power making monsters of the powerless.
Horror has never been so fashionable.
“We are the weirdos, mister.”
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10. Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
A bride, unflinching depictions of sexual violence, a woman’s operatic ascension into myth, a tale that tows the line between exploitation and empowerment, all colliding through a lens that fuses pulp and high art. Modern cinema lovers might be struck by the spirit of Tarantino when encountering Eiichi Yamamoto’s Belladonna of Sadness.
The movie follows Jeanne, a peasant woman who, after a brutal assault on her wedding night, makes a pact with a mysterious spirit. What begins as desperation transforms into a rebellion against feudal oppression.
The abstract depictions of sexual assault are harrowing. The film’s surreal eroticism and voyeuristic imagery make it difficult to parse as either exploitative or empowering. Initially rejected by female audiences, its 2016 restoration sparked reappraisal, with critics seeing Jeanne’s arc as proto-feminist resistance. She fights for liberation, ultimately becoming a martyr whose downfall fuels future rebellion.
Hauntingly beautiful yet deeply unsettling, Belladonna of Sadness is less horror than tragic, avant-garde vision of female power fuelled by injustice. A liberating fever dream unlike any other witch-centred film.
Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry women?
Final Thoughts
The witch has survived centuries of vilification, mockery, and demonisation, only to rise as one of horror’s most enduring icons. From the gothic paranoia of Rosemary’s Baby to the rebellious catharsis of The Craft, the psychedelic nightmare of Susperia to the tragic transcendence of Belladonna of Sadness, witches reveal not only our deepest fears, but also our unspoken desires for freedom, power, and transformation.
These films remind us that witches are never just monsters. They are mirrors, mirrors reflecting society’s anxieties, its cruelties, and its hypocrisies, while whispering promises of defiance and self-determination. Horror cinema thrives on these contradictions, where the witch can be both victim and villain, corrupter and liberator, nightmare and fantasy.
So, as Halloween creeps closer and you revisit these stories, consider that perhaps the true magic of the witch is not in curses, rituals, or covens, but in her refusal to disappear. She is reborn again and again, reshaped to fit each generation’s fears and fantasies. And whether we tremble at her power or secretly root for her rebellion, one thing is for certain: the witch will never stop haunting us.
Edward Swift
Edward is a circus coach/performer who enjoys musing life's great mysteries. He was raised by the television, the television of the 80s and 90s to be precise, affording him the strong opinions of someone approaching middle age. Ed's great loves include hanging upside down and his unbelievably adorable cat.
Edward Swift
Edward is a circus coach/performer who enjoys musing life's great mysteries. He was raised by the television, the television of the 80s and 90s to be precise, affording him the strong opinions of someone approaching middle age. Ed's great loves include hanging upside down and his unbelievably adorable cat.