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I recently had some houseguests, The conjuring came up on movie night, and the guy's girlfriend turned out to be a huge fan. They're competently done horror films, but I was a little bit surprised to find out that she thinks that they're real, and it took an effort of will for me to not go overboard poking holes in the Warrens. So now I've got all these thoughts about The conjuring.
Even in a film that glazes them, you can see the underlying shape of the grift. The mythos doesn't match up with other supernatural fiction, it matches up with the vague folk-Catholicism of a dumb person. Why is Ed Warren, who knows all there is to know about demons and exorcism rituals, less supernaturally potent than a Catholic priest, who probably thinks demons are imaginary? Why only a Catholic priest, why not a minister or a voodoo guy? Why is it relevant that the satanic witch ghost had a relative who was killed in the Salem witch trials? In the universe of The Conjuring, did the witch trials find real witches, rather than it just being a jilted lover and ergot poisoning? Just seems like such a unnecessary story element. Catching an actual witch at a witch trial is usually a punchline, like in Widows Bay or Treehouse of Horror. In the 70s did median American believe the Salem witch trials were real?
When a story is presented as fiction, this kind of inconsistency doesn't bother me as much, I don't ask why Patrick Swayze can walk through walls but not through floors, because ghost doesn't pretend to be a documentary.
Now I'm wondering if there has ever been a horror movie which was actually based on (not "inspired by") true events and didn't take major dramatic license. I suppose Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, although it's more of a thriller than a horror film. Likewise assorted films about real-life serial killers (Gacy, Dahmer etc.).
I'm not objecting to dramatic license, I'm objecting to the "mythos" and metaphysics. Whether the ghost actually dragged someone around a basement or held a door shut doesn't bother me nearly as much as the Salem Witch Trials thing.
It's handy shorthand for motivation. Nearly everyone has heard of the Salem Witch Trials, if you give the explanation as "the witch is seeking revenge for being murdered then", it is something the audience can accept, particularly if you're trying to root your movie in real-world events. Making up a witch character who died in a fictitious town on some obscure date works for an admittedly fictional story, but if you're trying to sell "this all happened to real people" then that's not good enough.
No the ghost in question is a descendant of the witch that died in the Salem witch trials. I just can't get over to anyone that made up that story either thinks the Salem witch trials caught actual witches or thinks the person they're talking to think that the Salem witch trials caught actual witches, when by this point it should be well-known that even if witches existed, the one place they weren't was at the Salem witch trials (being executed). That's why when people call things a "Witch Hunt" they don't mean a righteous crusade against practitioners of black magic, they mean a spurious moral panic.
I watched a movie recently, (spoilering the name because just being mentionned in this conversation kind of spoils the "twist")The Autopsy of Jane Doe , where the evil ghost/spirit that attacks our main characters is a woman that was burned at the Salem witch trials who was NOT a witch, but became one in death as revenge on the mean people who murdered her.
That kind of neatly gets around using the known event/period people strongly associate with witches in a horror movie while still acknowledging that it's mostly known for being a moral panic that was used to murder innocents.
Autopsy of Jane Doe also doesn't claim to be based on accounts that claim to be real. Also, buried alive, not burned.
But yes, the-bigots-created-the-monster is another variation. Or the "witch" does actually have magic powers or is psychic or whatever, but there's no connection to "satanism", which is ultimately Christian fanfiction.
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