Feminist Horror Double Feature

The terrifying feminism of 1970s classics ‘The Sentinel’ and ‘Season of the Witch’

Horror movies are such a party bag of schizophrenic social messaging. When you pull one out, you never know if you’ll get unpretentious entertainment, a smart vehicle for incisive social commentary, or an ugly racist/misogynistic free-for-all (calm down, Eli Roth, I wasn’t even looking at you).

Well, you do know what you’ll get sometimes. I mean, it’d be hard to buy a ticket to Get Out without knowing it falls into the second category. (Although I did hear actual humans who had just watched it emerge from the theater complaining that the most celebrated race-driven satire in years didn’t have to be so heavy on the race stuff.) But anyway, a lot of horror movies convey penetrating ideas subtly, through symbolism and metaphor. In this sense, the genre really is a mixed bag — undercurrents and allegories don’t always appear in trailers, so you don’t know what kind of horror movie you’re dealing with until you’ve already seen it. Or, alternatively, until somebody tips you off.

That’s where this article comes in — consider yourself tipped. If you’re craving some full-moon spookiness and you’re pissed about the patriarchy (and assuming you’ve already watched The Witch), go browse the surprisingly wide array of…