Jex Blackmore, head of Detroit’s Satanic Temple and a woman with a name better than anything put to film, has publicly endorsed the New England horror film The Witch.
Released this weekend, The Witch tells the story of a puritanical family exiled from their community and forced to establish a settlement of their own. The film finds the family struggling to remain faithful to God while supernatural forces seemingly tear the family and their makeshift farm apart, resulting in two hours of religious paranoia that has, apparently, spoken deeply to the Satanic Temple.
As reported in Variety, Jex Blackmore — the head of the Detroit chapter of the Satanic Temple — said, “The themes in the film mirrored the things we talk about in our work. It’s a criticism of a theocratic patriarchal society and a fair representation of the stresses that puts on a community.” Because she agrees so strongly with the film’s message, Blackmore worked with A24, the film’s distributor, to organize screenings that would also feature interactive performances.
“There were ritualistic elements and speeches that were intended to get people to awaken to their primal selves and rebel against a system of control based on an archaic reality,” she said.
The Variety piece mentions, and it must be pointed out, that the Satanic Temple is a place not concerned with sacrificing goats and drinking their blood, but instead with working to reclaim the term “satanist” as something representative of liberty rather than depravity.
Regardless, the Satanic Temple’s endorsement of the film should solidify your scaredy-cat friend’s anti-The Witch stance, but really, everyone should see it, even if the screening isn’t paired with aesthetic Satanic rituals.