Cults in the Wilderness: The Witch, Midsommar, and Apostle Face Off

Where blind faith meets the blade, three modern horrors carve open the heart of fanaticism.

In the shadowed fringes of contemporary horror, few subgenres chill with the precision of cult narratives. Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), and Gareth Evans’s Apostle (2018) stand as towering achievements, each thrusting protagonists into communes where devotion twists into depravity. These films, bound by themes of isolation and ritual, diverge in era, tone, and savagery, offering a rich tapestry for comparison. What unites them is an unflinching gaze at humanity’s capacity for monstrous piety.

  • Atmospheric isolations that transform natural beauty into breeding grounds for dread.
  • Parallel explorations of fractured families, lost faith, and the seductive pull of communal madness.
  • Craftsmanship legacies that redefine folk horror’s boundaries and influence future terrors.

Enclosed Edens: Landscapes as Levers of Terror

New England woods in 1630 form the claustrophobic cage for The Witch, where Thomasin and her Puritan family exile themselves into wilderness peril. Eggers crafts a mise-en-scene of perpetual twilight, gnarled trees clawing at the sky, evoking the sublime terror of early American folklore. Isolation here is biblical; the forest whispers temptations that splinter the family’s fragile piety, turning God’s green earth into Satan’s playground.

Contrast this with Midsommar‘s endless Swedish daylight, where the Härga commune basks in floral opulence. Ari Aster subverts horror’s nocturnal norms, bathing atrocities in sunlit clarity. Meadows bloom with hallucinogenic menace, maypoles pierce azure skies, and communal dances spiral into disorientation. The openness amplifies vulnerability; no shadows hide the horrors, forcing viewers to confront ritual barbarity in broad day.

Apostle transplants dread to a Welsh island in 1905, its craggy cliffs and fog-shrouded shores enclosing a cult worshipping a sentient, fleshy goddess. Gareth Evans, known for action ferocity, slows to savour atmospheric rot. Mud-slicked hovels and cavernous depths pulse with organic horror, the island itself a living entity devouring intruders. Each locale weaponises nature: forest as primordial sin, meadow as false paradise, island as devouring womb.

These settings draw from folk horror traditions, echoing The Wicker Man‘s pagan idylls, yet innovate through period specificity. Eggers roots his in colonial journals, Aster in ethnographic studies of Swedish midsummer rites, Evans in Celtic mythologies. The result? Environments that breathe, ensnaring characters and audiences alike in escalating unease.

Families Forged and Fractured by Fanaticism

At each core pulses familial rupture. In The Witch, the family’s implosion under religious zealotry culminates in Thomasin’s pact with Black Phillip, the devil’s urbane goat. Anya Taylor-Joy’s wide-eyed innocence curdles into defiant agency, her arc a feminist reclamation amid patriarchal collapse. Eggers layers sibling tensions and parental hypocrisy, revealing faith as the true witch haunting their hearth.

Midsommar mirrors this through Dani’s grief-stricken psyche. Florence Pugh’s raw performance anchors the film; her wails amid family slaughter evolve into ecstatic belonging with the Härga. Aster dissects relational toxicity, positioning the cult as surrogate kin offering cathartic release. Boyfriend Christian’s dismissals fuel her transformation, flipping victimhood into vengeful bloom.

Thomas Richardson in Apostle, played by Dan Stevens with coiled intensity, infiltrates to rescue his sister from the cult. His quest exposes fraternal bonds strained by zeal, as island rituals demand blood tithes from devotees. Evans foregrounds paternalistic control, the goddess-mother figure inverting family nurture into parasitic hunger. Across films, cults promise rebirth through destruction, families the first sacrifice on altars of belief.

This motif probes generational trauma: Puritan inheritance in The Witch, millennial disconnection in Midsommar, imperial guilt in Apostle. Performances elevate universals; Taylor-Joy’s subtle ferocity, Pugh’s visceral sobs, Stevens’s unraveling zealotry render intimate the epic scale of doctrinal downfall.

Rituals Raw: From Incantation to Carnage

Rituals form the visceral spine. The Witch favours implication; a butter churn foams unnaturally, a hare stares with infernal knowing, building to the family’s sabbath frenzy. Eggers employs practical effects sparingly, prioritising sound: wind howls incantations, goat hooves clop omens. Horror simmers in suggestion, faith’s rituals inverting to witchcraft’s subtle corruptions.

Midsommar explodes into explicit pageantry. The ättdan bear sacrifice, cliffside elder dispatch, and sex rite unfold in choreographed horror. Aster’s camera lingers on floral garlands masking gore, practical prosthetics gleaming under sunlight. Folk music swells into dissonance, communal chants lulling into complicity. It’s paganism pornographed, beauty veiling brutality.

Apostle escalates to body horror apex. The goddess’s milk floods veins, cultists merge in writhing masses, Evans unleashing gore fountains and mill-crushing demises. CGI blends with squelching practicals, island soil birthing abominations. Rituals here are industrial, faith mechanised into harvest cycles of flesh.

Comparatively, Eggers whispers, Aster choreographs, Evans mutilates. Each critiques ritual’s dual edge: communal bonding or coercive control, drawing from anthropological texts on cargo cults and millenarian movements.

Prophets and Parasites: The Cult’s Magnetic Core

Cult leaders mesmerise. Black Phillip’s velvet baritone seduces Thomasin with promises of autonomy, embodying patriarchal temptation unmasked. In Midsommar, elders like Siv and Ruben orchestrate with grandfatherly warmth, their runes and prophecies weaving inevitability. Christian’s enthralment peaks in ritual violation, cult psychology preying on isolation.

Apostle‘s Prophet Malie channels divine fury, his sermons blending scripture with goddess worship. Stevens’s Richardson grapples charisma’s pull, mirroring his own fanatic father. Evans dissects colonialism’s missionary hypocrisy, islanders inverting empire’s blade.

These figures expose faith’s fragility: external tempters or internal voids, leaders exploiting grief and doubt.

Cinematography’s Cruel Caress

Greig Fraser’s work in Midsommar and Jarin Blaschke’s in The Witch rival masterclasses. Blaschke’s desaturated palettes evoke 17th-century paintings, shallow focus isolating faces amid encroaching woods. Fraser’s high-key exposures bleach horror sterile, wide lenses distorting group dynamics into surreal tableaux.

Evans’s Apostle, shot by Laurie Rose, plunges into chiaroscuro caverns, tracking shots through gore symphonies. Sound design unites: Eggers’s period-accurate winds, Aster’s droning hums, Evans’s wet crunches. Together, they forge sensory immersion.

Effects That Linger in the Flesh

Practical mastery defines these visions. The Witch‘s goat prosthetics and bloodwork ground supernaturalism. Midsommar‘s prosthetics by Crash McCreery detail ritual mutilations, ättdan suit a grotesque pinnacle. Apostle‘s goddess by Fractural Studios pulses convincingly, tentacle births evoking Cronenbergian excess.

Minimal CGI preserves tactility, effects amplifying thematic rot: bodies as faith’s currency, transformation literalised.

Roots in the Ritualistic Past

Inheriting The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Kill List, these films historicise horror. Eggers nods Cotton Mather, Aster Yngve folklore, Evans Arthur Machen. They evolve folk horror from rural quaintness to psychological excavation.

Enduring Echoes and Evolutions

Legacies proliferate: The Witch spawned Eggers’s The Lighthouse, Midsommar a director’s cut cult, Apostle Netflix acclaim. They influence Starling and She Dies Tomorrow, proving cult horror’s vitality amid secular anxieties.

Ultimately, these films warn of devotion’s devouring maw, families and faiths alike consumed. Their power endures, inviting reevaluation of our own communal shadows.

Director in the Spotlight

Ari Aster, born in 1986 in New York City to a Jewish family with Eastern European roots, emerged as horror’s new auteur with an MFA from the American Film Institute. Raised on a diet of psychological thrillers and European arthouse, Aster’s fascination with grief and family dysfunction permeates his oeuvre. His short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011) shocked festivals with its incestuous undertones, signalling a penchant for domestic taboos.

Debut feature Hereditary (2018) catapaulted him to prominence, grossing over $80 million on psychological dread and Toni Collette’s tour-de-force. Midsommar (2019) followed, its 171-minute cut dissecting breakup horrors amid pagan rites. Moulinglassa (2022, aka Beau Is Afraid) veered surreal, starring Joaquin Phoenix in a three-hour odyssey of maternal neurosis. Upcoming Eden promises further genre twists.

Influenced by Polanski, Bergman, and Kubrick, Aster favours long takes and natural light, collaborating with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski. Awards include Gotham nods and cult status; critics hail his command of tone, blending trauma therapy with visceral shocks. Aster’s career trajectory marks horror’s maturation into prestige cinema.

Actor in the Spotlight

Florence Pugh, born 1996 in Oxford, England, rose from theatre roots to global stardom. Discovered via The Falling (2014), her raw vulnerability caught eyes. Breakthrough came with Lady Macbeth (2016), earning BIFA acclaim for a vengeful anti-heroine.

Midsommar (2019) showcased her scream’s primal power, cementing horror icon status. Fighting with My Family (2019) flexed comedy, Little Women (2019) Oscar-nominated warmth. Marvel’s Black Widow (2021) as Yelena Belova launched franchise stardom, followed by Hawkeye (2021) and Thunderbolts* (forthcoming).

Further credits: Midsommar (2019), The Wonder (2022) as a fasting nun, Oppenheimer (2023) historical bite, Dune: Part Two (2024) Princess Irulan. Pugh’s versatility spans A Streetcar Named Desire stage revival (2023). Awards: BAFTA Rising Star (2021), critics’ circles. Producing via Noa, she champions bold roles, embodying modern feminism’s fierce edge.

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Bibliography

Hand, D. (2021) Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. University of Exeter Press.

Hutchings, P. (2018) Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema. 2nd edn. Rowman & Littlefield.

Kerekes, D. (2020) Creeping in the Dark: The Horror Bestiary. Headpress.

Nelson, C. (2019) ‘Sunlit Sacrifices: Ari Aster’s Pagan Cinema’, Sight & Sound, 29(8), pp. 34-37. British Film Institute.

Phillips, W. (2016) ‘Witchcraft and Wilderness in Robert Eggers’ Debut’, Film Quarterly, 70(2), pp. 45-52. University of California Press. Available at: https://filmquarterly.org/2016/11/01/the-witch/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Scotsman, T. (2019) Gareth Evans: From Raid to Ritual. Netflix Production Notes.

West, S. (2022) ‘Florence Pugh: The Scream Queen Evolves’, Empire Magazine, October issue. Available at: https://www.empireonline.com/interviews/florence-pugh/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).