Putting A Spell On You: 10 Scary Movies About Witches

From Mario Bava’s unsettling Black Sunday depicting a vengeful witch through to the malevolent forces of Polanki’s Rosemary’s Baby and Argento’s Suspiria and on to Robert Eggers’ modern masterpiece The Witch, the character has certainly made a strong impression on horror cinema.

Whether a lone force or a coven, the scariest movies about witches are often distinguished by their unsettling, foreboding tones that recall the most disturbing tales from the brothers Grimm. But as we’re about to find out, there’s a lot more to a witch than a pointed black hat and broomstick.

The best films about witches

Witches feel like they’ve been an ever-present in cinema. After all, most of us before puberty will have witnessed the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz and had Margaret Hamilton’s disturbing green face and crooked, pointed nose imprinted in our nightmares.

Witchfinder General (1968)

This folkloric character – a villain for the most part – hasn’t always been painted as nasty and malevolent in movies. Through the Harry Potter franchise, J.K. Rowling made sure audiences were aware of benevolent witches and created a poster girl for the witch-as-hero role in Hermione Grainger.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Roeg also discovered that some witches had goodness in their heart in 1990’s The Witches which was adapted from the Roald Dahl novel.

I put a spell on you: The Witches (1990).

Other films have taken the idea of witches and, rather than frame it exclusively around horror, created teen drama (The Craft), romantic comedy (Practical Magic, The Witches of Eastwick), and animation for younger audiences (Kiki’s Deliver Service).

But, when we think about the best films about witches, it’s easy to default to the scariest depictions of the character as they are the ones that really stand out. Here’s 10 of the best.

10. The Legacy

Dir. Marquand (1978)

The Legacy might be a messy, uneven, and nonsensical at times but, despite crossing the line between entertainment and cinematic purgatory with the frequency of an annoying hiccup, this tale of dark magic, witchcraft and botched tracheotomies surprises with an unlikely charm. The illegitimate child of Hammer horror suffering from the out of control tendencies of a belligerent toddler.

9. Don’t Knock Twice

Dir. James (2016)

From the pen of writing duo Nick Ostler and Mark Huckerby, this frenetically paced tale of urban legend draws its strengths from an ability to conjure a genuinely unnerving malevolence courtesy of its terrifying villain, while the dynamic of mother and daughter finding strength in each other provides an engaging backdrop.

8. Inferno

Dir. Argento (1980)

Part of a trilogy of films about witches from writer-director Dario Argento, Inferno has earned plenty of praise over the years including being called “the most underrated horror movie of the 1980s” by critic Kim Newman. Weaved around visceral murder scenes, the film concerns a young man’s search for his missing sister who had been living in a mysterious New York City apartment building hosting a malevolent witch in search of vulnerable prey.

7. The Witches

Dir. Roeg (1990)

Nothing to fear here apart from a little child torture in The Witches.

The unpredictable, offbeat, monotone reality of Nicolas Roeg’s world is an ideal if unsettlingly dark stage from which to tell Roald Dahl’s classic story, The Witches, which, while being a film aimed at children, could easily be re-wired for adults only. Roeg’s film strikes a good balance but most children will have trouble dealing with Angelica Huston’s witch, the marvellous make-up effects transforming the actress into a haggard creature eager to infect your nightmares, whether you’re six or sixty.

6. Black Sunday

Dir. Bava (1960)

Arguably Italian filmmaker Mario Bava’s best film, 1960’s Black Sunday is loosely based on the short story “Viy” by Nikolai Gogol and tells the tale of a witch who, after being put to death by her brother, returns to seek revenge on her descendants centuries later. It’s relentlessly creepy thanks to Bava’s unsettling tone and macabre imagery.

5. Suspiria

Dir. Argento (1977)

Director Dario Argento combines the art of ballet with the artistry of witchery in the Italian giallo masterpiece, Suspiria. A young dancer joins a new ballet school but soon becomes aware that something is amiss after a spate of mysterious murders. She is drawn to the conclusion that the school is harbouring a terrible supernatural secret.

4. The Blair Witch Project

Dir. Sanchez/Myrick (1999)

Still the best found footage horror film, The Blair Witch Project finds three student filmmakers taking a black and white 16mm camera and a colour video camera into woodland near Burkittsville, Maryland to make a documentary about the mysterious Blair Witch. The legend tells of a crazed hermit who murdered children before turning himself into police claiming he was forced to do it by the spirit of a dead witch.

3. Witchfinder General

Dir. Reeves (1968)

Witchfinder General tells the fictionalised tale of 17th century English lawyer Matthew Hopkins who, appointed by the State, sets out across the country to find those supposedly practising witchcraft. His methods of torture often bring death to those he accuses of dark magic whether or not they prove his theory. An opportunist more than anything, he’s a sinister force who takes advantage of social upheaval and the preoccupations of the government during the English Civil War, to enact a perverse, nihilistic pleasure in the destruction of others.

2. Rosemary’s Baby

Dir. Polanski (1968)

Roman Polanski brings Ira Levin’s bestselling 1967 novel to the screen with a beautifully realised foreboding atmosphere and an understated, vulnerable performance from Mia Farrow. The story tells of a struggling actor who befriends an odd couple who practice the art of witchcraft. In return for his wife, unknowingly, being impregnated by the devil, they will ensure his acting career takes off.

1. The Witch

Dir. Eggers (2015)

The visceral, unnerving and, quite frankly, tormenting horrors of Robert Eggers splendid writing-directing debut capture the medieval church’s “olde” world paranoia we witnessed in The Witchfinder General alongside the woodland seclusion of The Blair Witch Project but do so in a way that is uniquely unsettling.

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