The atmosphere of the film was created with great care, and the slow rhythm unique to Spanish films brought the horror atmosphere step by step.
The little boy's female psychiatrist was stabbed to death by a tree branch as soon as he appeared on the scene, and the little boy's mother had been away for a while or was tricked by a phone call back and was hanged to death, indicating that the witch wanted to kill anyone who entered the house indiscriminately.
There are not too many religious factors in the main line of the film's story, and various technological factors are added, such as the use of infrared camera detection, microwave audio collectors and other equipment, but the logic of burning the witch's mummified corpse to eliminate the witch's ghost still originates from The Catholic way of dealing with witches.
A brief introduction to witches in medieval Europe.
After the Mongol invasion and the Black Death swept across Europe in the Middle Ages, people began to doubt the authority of Catholicism, and there were some methods of treating diseases that depended on folk medicine, as well as spiritual sustenance for other gods. The Holy See Church is very afraid of this, for fear that the emergence and growth of these "heretics" will pose a threat to its own dominance.
So in 1484, the Pope called for the elimination of all witches on the grounds that witches colluded with the devil to spread the plague. All the clergy and believers responded one after another, and a mighty movement to eliminate witches in Europe was launched. Soon those women who practiced "witchcraft" were reported, then subjected to so-called "inquisitions" and were eventually eliminated.
During this process, most of the "witches" who were "trialed" were women who had nothing to do with witch doctors. Some of them might be village doctors who knew a little about medical skills, and some might be pretty ordinary people. Women, as long as they are reported by someone with ulterior motives and caught by the church, they will all be tortured first, until they confess to having made a deal with the devil or take refuge with the devil. Then there is "purification", which is directly burned to death, or tied up and thrown into the water. If it sinks, it is innocent (and drowned), and the witch who does not sink is a witch, and then it is set up and burned to death.
The witch hunt continued until 1782, when a "witch" named Anna Goldi was beheaded in Switzerland, and the 3-century dark campaign of persecution of women finally came to an end. During nearly 300 years of witch hunts, countless women across Europe were drowned or burned after suffering various tortures. There are still traces of the witch hunt era in the religious relics in many parts of Europe.
The big house where the family of three lives in this film is a secret place where the Spanish Catholic Church dealt with witches. Deep in the basement, locked in an iron cage is a witch who can confuse others by sound. The whole mouth of the witch is specially damaged. The tools were rotten, and they were locked in iron cages and starved to death to become mummified corpses. Although the witch is dead, the ghost is still powerful enough to let flies get into people's ears and kill people.
From this point of view, the church at the time was not mistaken. The witch locked in the iron cage was indeed a real witch, but she handled it a little hasty. Although starving to death is more deterrent, the traditional method of flooding and burning is not used. As a result, the ghost of the witch can still cause harm to the world after the death of the witch, and finally killed the family of three in the film. The typical way of doing things is to leave a tail and kill people directly.
In order to create a terrifying atmosphere, this film did not create any aesthetic feeling for the witch's mummified corpse and ghost.
It is quite different from the image of witches we usually imagine.
Also, let's talk about a bug in the logic of the movie. The master and the professor and the woman went down to the basement together and found the witch's mummified corpse. They should have understood the power of the witch's ghost. The three of them chose to split up at this time, which was simply giving the witch's ghost a chance to destroy them one by one. Fortunately, the old man was determined at the last moment and used a shotgun to set the witch's mummified corpse on fire, otherwise the three of them would be completely hung in front of the witch. This kind of plot arrangement is a bit too deliberate.
The easter egg at the end was almost missed, there was no sign.
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