"It is a visceral experience disguised as an erudite thesis," adds Stephen Volk, noted horror screenwriter of the BBC's infamously scary Ghostwatch (1992), another horror masquerading as a documentary. "It perfectly balances the beautiful and the grotesque and there are some scenes that are truly bizarre," says artist and founder of the Folk Horror Revival project Andy Paciorek. Its imagery is some of the most unnerving made in the silent period as it conjures up depictions of occult practices and scenarios, from people cavorting with devils to child sacrifice. Christensen's skill in special effects and sheer visual panache means that as soon as the film shifts from its essayistic stance, Häxan punches as hard as any horror film from its era. Yet, Häxan is not simply a documentary or docudrama.
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After this series of visceral images, the final chapters focus on the more modern psychological potential of the phenomena and look into the possibility that such violent inquisition itself was responsible for many of the confessions.
By the later chapters, however, Christensen is dramatising a disturbing narrative in miniature, following Maria (Emmy Schønfeld) who is tortured into confessing a range of occult activities, including bearing the children of Satan, before being burnt at the stake. The film's opening chapter is a relatively straightforward lecture with historic slides and information, while the second chapter has a playful series of vignettes depicting some basic practices of witchcraft.
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The film is in part a textural, creative reading of the Malleus Maleficarum, a German witch-hunters' guide from the 1400s by clergyman Heinrich Kramer that provided insight into how to deal with all manner of devilish concerns. No one describes the film better than the director himself who suggested at the time that "my film has no continuous story, no 'plot' – it could perhaps best be classified as a cultural history lecture in moving pictures". Part documentary essay, part horror mood board, Häxan is an episodic film, which across seven chapters explores a range of beliefs and themes throughout the Western history of occultism, in particular focussing on witchcraft during the Medieval period, and the historic persecution of women accused of practising it. – The blinding terror of 'daylight horror' – The sci-fi series that terrified a generation – How Deliverance set a controversial trend Whereas Murnau defined narrative horror through powerful German Expressionist visuals, the Danish director of this Svensk Filmindustri production innovated with horror's form, creating one of the strangest films of the period – whose eerie atmosphere, stark visuals and experimentation still stand up today. However, around the same time as Murnau's film, another seminal, but today less celebrated, horror was released: the Swedish-produced Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages by Danish director Benjamin Christensen. It was the year when FW Murnau made his unofficial Dracula adaptation Nosferatu, providing an early scare for audiences even as he fell afoul to copyright breaches. In the lineage of horror cinema, 1922 surely counts as one of its most important years.
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