Guillermo del Toro Champions This Free-To-Stream Classic Horror Film About the Occult
A few years back, Guillermo del Toro compiled a list of his top 10 Criterion releases. Well, more like his top 20. The Oscar-winning creator wasn’t able to pick just 10. So, the director instead submitted two films for each slot in his top ten, counting every pairing as ‘a tie’.
Tied for ninth place are Vampyr and Häxan. We think Häxan is a particularly exciting recommendation, as the film takes a documentary-style approach to chronicling the history of witchcraft and paganism over the years.
The setup for Häxan is as follows:
A hybrid of documentary and fiction, this silent film explores the history of witchcraft, demonology, and satanism. It shows representations of evil in a variety of ancient and medieval artworks, offers vignettes illustrating a number of superstitious practices, and presents a narrative about the persecution of a woman accused of witchcraft. The film ends by suggesting that the modern science of psychology offers important insight into the beliefs and practices of the past.
In del Toro’s own words,
“Häxan is the filmic equivalent of a hellish engraving by Bruegel or a painting by Bosch. It’s a strangely titillating record of sin and perversity that is as full of dread as it is of desire and atheistic conviction and a condemnation of superstition that is morbidly in love with its subject.”
That’s quite an enthusiastic endorsement. But considering del Toro’s passion for macabre filmmaking, that should come as no surprise. If you’re curious to check the film out, you can find it streaming on Tubi (and Max) as of the publication of this post.
Stay tuned to the site for more recommendations from the cinematic master as we learn them. Be sure to follow @DreadCentral on Twitter so you never miss an update.
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