Damnation or Deliverance:

The False Choice of Women in Horror

A deep look at The Witch, Suspria and Other Women Horror

“What dost thou want?”

The illusion of choice.

“Wouldst thou like the taste of butter, a pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”Temptation to a better, more independent life.

“Dost thou see a book before thee? Remove thy shift. I will guide thy hand.”

And then we have submission before forbidden knowledge. How does Robert Eggers have such deep insight into the oppression and sacrifices of women, and how loudly does he have to continue to scream before others get the point?

Black Phillip’s words have been resonating in my head for years — ever since I first saw ‘The Witch’ a decade ago. It’s been ruminating and repeating inside of me like a vicious cycle, because, for some deeply ingrained, completely patriarchal reason, the whole concept of a man asking a woman if she would like her freedom back is disgustingly seductive.

The man offering freedom in The Witch, fabricated by the persona of the Baphomet Goat, is the devil in the flesh, and that’s truly where the seduction lies - not in the promise of freedom, the gift of our autonomy, but the price that comes with it.

When you look deeper into The Witch and the world it was built in, and other religious horrors - dating all the way back to The Exorcist - you’ll find there is no winning in the life of being a woman. Our bodies have been a battleground for centuries with the church. Our purity is manipulated, turned into an obsession and driven to destroy our sanctity.

We are immaculate — the perfect image. We wield a divine purpose we never asked for, but when we choose not to use it, we are drenched in wicked possession. The whole concept of women ever having any form of autonomy in this medium is a joke. There’s no power in conception. It’s power in submission.

Submit to Christ and be saved.

Submit to Lucifer and be free.

Get on your knees and pray.

Eggers is spot on with his perception: the temptation is delicious. There’s allure in dancing with the devil to regain control over our own bodies. It’s wrapped in the very ‘evil’ that has affected our lives for thousands of years:

If we have our autonomy, if we are released from shame and regain our power, then we are wicked. If we are pure, if we are vessels, then we must be holy - but in that we are hollow, because in that, a woman is only good if she doesn’t belong to herself. We are damned if we do, damned if we don’t and exist purely in a catch-22.

The choice we are given is an illusion, so why not take the devil's hand? Why not live deliciously?

In The Witch, we meet Thomasin, a peasant girl. She was bound by the rules of society, rules that her family, her father, insisted she needed to follow. She was destined to be nothing more than a bought wife and live in commonality with only good virtue. As disease took over her family's livelihood and death wreaked havoc in all that surrounded her, she became bound to the system, at birth, and Black Philip, with his offers, gave her life back to her - but only through a form of control.

There was never a plan to set her free to regain her vitality or progress in life the way she chooses to. She is only free if she walks the darker, more dangerous form of deliverance - the illusion of control when the devil is the one who’s holding the reins, and when there is control, there is fear.

Eggers understands the nature of temptation, and he shows how deep the social roots grow when we are told what’s good for us, what we can and cannot be, and how easy it is to give in to the offer when it's everything - but only if you give yourself over to it. He shows the same symbolic nature in Ellen’s fate in Nosferatu, just without the religious overtones: give yourself over, and you will be free. Let evil in, ad you will serve your true purpose as a woman. Both women find their freedom, but only after being stripped naked and giving themselves to something dark.

Eggers isn’t the only reflection of the cost of enslavement to spirituality. Lucia Guadagnino, with writers Dario Argento (original), Daria Nicolodi and David Kajganich weave the narrative of false empowerment in the 2018 remake of Suspiria. Possession is not overtly supernatural, and it does not need to tie into anything biblical for it to be rooted in the guise of liberation. Susie believes she’s meant to ascend into feminine power on her terms. She chooses to leave her Mennonite roots, travels to Berlin, joins the academy and gives herself fully into dance, except that it was never her choice; her fate was always twisted into becoming Mother Suspiriom. In the end, she embraces her power, but it begs the question—was she ever free to reject it? Sure, she forbade herself from becoming another pawn of the social hierarchy within the coven, but there was no freedom here. She merely embraced her predestination.

Susie becomes a representation of a woman who can no longer be controlled but only gets here through dominion. Has she gained her autonomy if her autonomy is no longer her own? The Suspiria remake is, at the core of it all, not about the feminine divine and the monstrous mother; it’s about a woman stepping into power that was never hers, to begin with.

A woman is only good as long as she doesn't belong to herself.

This paradoxical theme is persistent in films based on a woman's salvation, and even more prevalent in possession—the punishment for female power: I have been seduced by the devil, I’m corrupt. I am unnatural, dangerous, and therefore I must be exorcised. Possession narratives take this fear and manifest it as a literal invasion of the body and mind.

How can our bodies belong to us when they’re either claimed by God or the Devil?

In Saint Maud (2019), Maud believes she has been chosen and now struggles with the internal battle between self-denial and repressed desire. In The Last Exorcism (2010), a young girl is possessed, but the twist, she’s carrying a child herself. Now, we have blurred lines between the horror of possession and the real-life horror of women being forced to conform to the patriarchy. In Jennifer Body (2009), Jennifer is treated like an object, a beautiful woman who wields seductive power over men, but once she realizes that power? Well, now she’s a monster, and monsters must be destroyed.

We can’t talk about possession in films without mentioning ‘The Exorcist’ (1973)—the blueprint of them all. William Peter Blatty has always claimed that his novel and this film were meant to reaffirm and reestablish belief in god but strip it down to its bones, and it will reveal something deeper. To first understand why The Exorcist is such a pivotal film on the subject of female autonomy—in this particular case, adolescent autonomy—we must first acknowledge the crucial change from its source. In the true story that inspired it and was portrayed in Blatty’s novel, the protagonist is a 14-year-old boy. Do not be fooled by the change; this wasn’t a storytelling device. It was a deliberate shift to gendered horror. Regan’s possession is now directly tied to her changing body, utterly aligned with her puberty, and the moment a young girl is no longer perceived as innocent, she becomes corrupt, a perverse version of herself. Her body transforms from a vessel of purity to one of sin, violence becomes etched on her skin, and she’s degraded to being a reflection of society's fear. In the 70s, a young girl stepping into her power was terrifying to the patriarchy. The Exorcist is haunted by the anxieties of that era when women’s liberation was gaining momentum, and what could be more distressing than a girl they can no longer control?

Regan is the peak embodiment of that fear. She’s drenched in profanities, she forcefully exerts tremendous power over the men around her, and she's rippled with overt sexual aggression that no “good girl” should ever encompass. The only answer to rid a young woman of this essence? Exorcism. Let’s take away all the power that you have gained in a ritual of dominance. Not a spiritual connection with the divine to heal, but a spiritual correction.

Even Pazuzu was an intentional choice—this is not simply a demon created for a story but an entity based on Mesopotamian mythology. A creature of pestilence, disease, but not to corrupt—to save. To possess a young girl would bring forth spiritual chaos and a breakdown of order in society.

Pazuzu wasn’t there to corrupt her; he was there to save her, which begs the question, why do women need saving? And why can’t we save ourselves? The removal of this entity was never about saving Regan; it was about returning her to a state of control, exorcising and removing defiance, because god forbid (literally) a little girl grows up and decides she doesn't want to be saved by men.

So, why is it always women who are possessed? The simple answer is that they’re not stories about what happens when an evil entity takes over your body. They’re stories about control and the way society loves to control women. All of the woman, right down to what we grow inside our bodies.

A woman is only good as long as she doesn't belong to herself.

Women are the matrix. We are the environment in which something develops. To have the power to give life is immense, as if we are all gods, but that power has been reduced to containment, and now we are pods. I’ve always found it ironic that Roman Polanski directed ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (I’ll say it: the book is better). A deeply controversial man, arrested and charged with the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, to direct a film that delves into manipulation, control and exploitation creates such a stark example of life imitating art, or vice versa. And despite that, I would rather spit in his face than watch the film; it’s important to note the key theme of it: men, without consent, controlling a woman and her autonomy. Rosemary is vulnerable to her medical treatment in a male-dominated field; she is gaslit and subjected to torture, stripped of her agency, and once again taken over by a demonic force as society continues to rob women of control of their own lives—particularly in this case, when it comes to reproductive rights and healthcare. To experience motherhood with no choice. She was raped, and now she must nurture the product of that assault and raise the evil that destroyed her.

This theme persisted in 2024 with Immaculate and The First Omen, with the bleak exception that it wasn’t a coven of witches calling upon a demon or devil to commit atrocities on a woman, but the Church itself and all the layered evil that’s corrupted inside of it. In ‘Immaculate,’ Sister Celcia finds herself mysteriously impregnated with the resurrection of Christ, while The First Omen explores that of the antichrist—is one more sinister than the other? Sister Celia’s pregnancy served a purpose beyond her control, bodily violation masked as divine intervention. Her body was chosen. Not her. In The First Omen, Margaret was groomed and manipulated with biblical imagery and fear-mongering. Weaponized faith to control her body. Divine motherhood without consent. To give up autonomy for the greater good. Or evil. In the end, each perspective is the same.

A woman is only good as long as she doesn't belong to herself.

So, wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

The Witch, Suspiria, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby and painfully so many more, we are forced to absorb the fact that there is no freedom. Autonomy has long been stripped away; oppression is our life. Women are presented with the illusion of choice, where the only way to gain freedom is to give themselves to something darker.

Robert Eggers’ ‘The Witch’ is the embodiment of this paradox. Black Phillips's lustrous, seductive voice offers freedom, but the freedom is the cost of Thomasin's soul. Liberation is manipulated, and power is only grasped by relinquishing virtue. In ‘Suspiria,’ Susie’s ascension was not based on personal empowerment but on predestination. Regan’s body is a battleground, and only men can save her.

In these films, women are denied full autonomy of all that encompasses us. In our body, our mind, and our soul. Whether we are forced to be mothers or have external controls take our bodies as if they belong to anyone but us. We are pawns for the ‘greater good’ and are not asked but forced to choose between false saviours.

Filmmakers and society are so deeply ingrained in this narrative that it’s no longer questioned, and the world is blinded to the point where they all. These films scream the loudest truths about this nature, but then some reviewer depletes that point by saying the soundtrack is bad, or it’s too sexual, or unrealistic.

In the end, the question is not asking “why women are possessed” but begging to know why having our own agency has always been considered so dangerous. Perhaps the ultimate fear in religious horror is not a demon enticing a soul or a Church using a woman's body as a vessel for reincarnation. Maybe the ultimate fear is a woman in full ownership of herself, becoming a force beyond patriarchal control.