Shadows of the Sabbath: Black Sunday and The Witch Unearth Folk Horror’s Dark Roots

Where ancient curses meet puritan paranoia, two cinematic witches cast spells that still haunt the genre.

In the shadowed corners of horror cinema, few subgenres evoke such primal dread as folk horror, with its blend of rural isolation, pagan rituals, and the uneasy clash between old gods and new faiths. Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) and Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) stand as towering achievements in this tradition, each summoning witches from folklore to torment the pious and the profane. This comparison peels back their layers, revealing how these films, separated by decades and oceans, mirror and magnify the terrors of superstition in secluded landscapes.

  • Both films weaponise isolation and religious fervor to amplify folkloric fears, turning woods and villages into cauldrons of the uncanny.
  • Bava’s gothic visuals and Eggers’ period authenticity create contrasting yet complementary aesthetics of dread.
  • Through unforgettable female antagonists and crumbling family units, they probe the intersections of gender, faith, and the supernatural.

Covens in the Wilderness: Isolation as Incantation

At the heart of folk horror lies the wilderness, a realm where civilisation frays and ancient forces stir. In Black Sunday, the remote Moldavian village of Belial serves as a gothic stage for Princess Asa Vajda’s resurrection. Desecrated by torch-bearing puritans in 1630, her corpse bears the iron mask of shame, yet it pulses with unholy vitality. When two doctors unwittingly revive her through a botched blood ritual, the fog-shrouded castle and decrepit crypts become extensions of her vengeful will. Bava crafts a world where every cobwebbed corner whispers of forgotten pacts, the isolation not merely geographical but spiritual, severing the living from salvation.

Robert Eggers mirrors this in The Witch, transplanting the dread to 1630s New England plantations. Thomasin’s family, banished from their plantation for rigid beliefs, erects a homestead on the edge of impenetrable woods. Here, the forest is a living entity, its gnarled trees and whispering winds harbouring a goat named Black Phillip that embodies satanic temptation. Eggers draws from historical accounts of colonial paranoia, making isolation a psychological vice that squeezes the family until paranoia festers into accusation and betrayal. Unlike Bava’s aristocratic curse, Eggers’ wilderness preys on the humble, turning self-reliance into a fatal delusion.

The parallels deepen in how both films use landscape as antagonist. Bava’s expressionistic sets, with their towering spires and perpetual twilight, evoke Hammer Horror’s grandeur but infuse it with Italian operatic flair. Eggers, obsessed with verisimilitude, shot on practical locations in Ontario’s dense forests, capturing authentic 17th-century dread through desaturated palettes and natural light. This shared emphasis on place underscores folk horror’s core: humanity’s fragility against nature’s pagan memory.

Witches Unveiled: From Vajda to Thomasin

No folk horror endures without its witch, and both films deliver icons that transcend their eras. Barbara Steele’s dual performance as Asa and her descendant Katia in Black Sunday is a revelation of vampiric allure. Asa’s eyes, burning with infernal fire beneath the mask, symbolise repressed female rage unleashed. Possessing Katia, she seduces and slays, her beauty a weapon honed by centuries of persecution. Steele’s portrayal draws from European witch trial lore, where women were demonised as sabbath queens, blending eroticism with terror in a way that influenced countless giallo seductresses.

Eggers counters with Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin, evolving from innocent daughter to ambiguous witch-in-training. Her arc traces the suffocating patriarchy of puritan life, where accusations of witchcraft offer escape from drudgery. The film’s climax, with Thomasin’s pact under moonlight, echoes historical fears of female apostasy documented in Cotton Mather’s writings. Taylor-Joy’s wide-eyed innocence fractures into defiant sensuality, mirroring Asa’s possession but grounded in adolescent rebellion rather than supernatural takeover.

These witches embody folk horror’s gender critique. Asa represents the aristocratic witch persecuted by mob justice, her return a feudal reckoning. Thomasin, conversely, is the everyman’s daughter, her ‘corruption’ born of familial collapse. Both challenge male authority—Asa through overt sorcery, Thomasin through subtle subversion—highlighting how folklore vilifies women’s autonomy amid religious control.

Faith’s Fractured Mirror: Puritan Pyres and Orthodox Icons

Religious hysteria fuels both narratives, transforming piety into peril. Black Sunday opens with Asa’s execution by the Brotherhood of the Bat, their torches illuminating a ritual that ironically empowers her curse. The 19th-century doctors, Dr. Kruvajan and Dr. Goroboi, stumble into this legacy, their rationalism crumbling before Orthodox icons that weep blood. Bava weaves Catholic and Eastern rites into a tapestry of syncretic dread, where faith’s icons become conduits for the demonic.

The Witch immerses viewers in puritan Calvinism, with William’s patriarchal sermons on original sin clashing against woodland temptations. The family’s prayers devolve into screams as crops fail and infants vanish, echoing Salem trial hysteria. Eggers consulted period texts like The Discovery of Witches, rendering faith not as shield but snare, where doubt breeds damnation.

This religious framework elevates folk horror beyond shocks, probing ideology’s dark underbelly. Both films depict faith as double-edged: a bulwark against chaos that invites it when rigidified. Asa thrives on desecration’s backlash; Black Phillip exploits scripture’s gaps.

Cinematography’s Cauldron: Visual Sorcery on Screen

Bava’s mastery of light defines Black Sunday‘s allure. His use of fog filters and backlit silhouettes creates a dreamlike unreality, with candle flames flickering across Steele’s porcelain skin. Influenced by German expressionism, sequences like Asa’s mask removal—shadows dancing on dripping walls—build tension through composition alone, eschewing gore for poetic menace.

Eggers employs naturalism to chilling effect, with wide-angle lenses distorting forest depths and shallow focus isolating faces amid vast emptiness. The slow-burn tracking shots during Thomasin’s woodland wanderings evoke dread through restraint, while firelight scenes pulse with historical accuracy, drawing from Vermeer and Caravaggio.

Yet contrasts abound: Bava’s operatic flourishes versus Eggers’ austere realism. Both, however, harness mise-en-scène to symbolise folk horror’s uncanny—objects like the blood-filled vial or the family’s silver cup becoming talismans of doom.

Soundscapes of the Sabbath: Auditory Ancestral Whispers

Sound design amplifies isolation’s terror. Black Sunday‘s score by Les Baxter blends theremin wails with choral chants, evoking Eastern European laments. Dripping water, creaking doors, and Steele’s husky incantations form a symphony of unease, where silence precedes screams.

The Witch favours diegetic immersion: wind howls, goat bleats, and Mark Korven’s string drones mimic colonial unease. Thomasin’s whispers and the baby’s guttural wails pierce the quiet, rooting horror in authenticity.

These aural strategies bind the films, using sound to invoke folklore’s oral traditions—curses passed in murmurs, rituals sung in tongues.

Effects and Artifice: Crafting the Uncanny

Special effects in Black Sunday rely on practical ingenuity. Asa’s decay via latex prosthetics and green filter for ghostly glows astound, while matte paintings expand castles into infinite night. Bava’s low-budget wizardry, including wire-suspended bats, prioritises atmosphere over excess.

The Witch blends practical and subtle CGI: Black Phillip’s transformations use animatronics, while nudity and bloodletting stay grounded. Eggers’ restraint enhances folk authenticity, avoiding modern splatter for implied horrors.

Both exemplify effects’ evolution in folk horror—from Bava’s gothic illusions to Eggers’ tactile realism—proving less is more in summoning the supernatural.

Legacy’s Lingering Curse: Echoes in Modern Horror

Black Sunday birthed Italian horror’s golden age, inspiring Suspiria and Inferno. Its witch archetype permeates Hereditary and Midsommar. The Witch revitalised folk horror post-Midsommar, influencing Apostle and Starling.

Together, they anchor the subgenre’s revival, blending history with innovation to remind us folklore’s fears endure.

Director in the Spotlight

Mario Bava, born 31 July 1914 in Sanremo, Italy, emerged from a cinematic dynasty; his father was a sculptor-turned-projectionist. Initially a cinematographer, Bava honed his visual genius on films like Riccardo Freda’s I Vampiri (1957). Directing debut Black Sunday (1960) catapulted him to mastery, blending gothic elegance with horror innovation. Despite erratic career due to producer disputes, Bava influenced Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton.

Key works include The Whip and the Body (1963), a sadomasochistic gothic; Blood and Black Lace (1964), proto-giallo slasher; Planet of the Vampires (1965), sci-fi chiller; Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966), spectral ghost story; Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), slasher progenitor; Bay of Blood (1971), body-count innovator; and Lisa and the Devil (1974), surreal nightmare. Bava died 25 April 1980, leaving unfinished Demons (1985) completed by his son Lamberto. His legacy endures in atmospheric dread.

Actor in the Spotlight

Barbara Steele, born 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, England, became horror’s scream queen after Black Sunday. Trained at RADA, she modelled before Italy beckoned. Steele’s dual role mesmerised, earning her ‘Scream Queen’ moniker and roles in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) opposite Vincent Price.

Her career spanned 81⁄2 (1963) with Fellini, Danielle (1966) horror, They Came from Within (1975) Cronenberg body horror, Caged Heat (1974) exploitation, The Silent Scream (1979) slasher, and later The Butcher’s Wife (1991). Awards include Saturn nods; she retired post-The Parasite Murders (1970s). Steele’s hypnotic gaze defined Eurohorror, influencing Neve Campbell and Fairuza Balk.

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