Witches go in and out of “fashion”, so to speak, depending on the pop culture being presented. Thanks to Wandavision, Hocus Pocus 2, and the new Agatha All Along, one could argue that witches are back in the zeitgeist in a way they haven’t been since the mid-1990s. With witches being top of mind, National Geographic found it the perfect time to highlight the dismaying history behind the Halloween iconography.
Witches: Truth Behind the Trials is a new six-part documentary series that dives into the witch trials that plagued the past. Over the course of the six episodes, historians detail the trials that changed communities fundamentally through their blame games and eventual executions. The stories featured come from England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, and the United States of America.
It seems that everyone has a vague sense of witch trials as a concept thanks to big (Arthur Miller’s The Crucible) and small (that one episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch) representations in the media. Yet, the smaller and essential details get lost over time. Why yes, women were hanged for being deemed witches by their community. In the case of the Salem Witch Trials, however, did you know it stemmed from a preacher’s children blaming an indigenous woman?
Of course, the meat of each episode is intriguing. In the episodes I watched to review, I was struck by how little was properly discussed about the matters. The Salem episode ends with a historian sharing that the residents only took one lesson from the ordeal: not to trust young women. It was delivered like a gut-punch.
Across the episodes, the unfortunate parallels to modern society are prevalent. The overall public is wildly gullible to a fault. People would rather listen to a tall-tale than do any research on the matter. And, as the above historian quote mentioned, many have trouble believing women. It’s all so disheartening to compare, but it raises a strong argument that the human race will never change. The pendulum of progress remains swinging back-and-forth, never fully stopping towards equality.
While the content remains eye-opening, it’s quite boring. I am aware it makes me sound a bit juvenile, but this is very much the type of documentary your teacher would put on in middle school on an off day: educational, but you could still finish an entire episode before the bell rang.The historians deliver the facts plainly while reenactments are played out underneath the narration. Luckily, these reenactments don’t feature dialogue themselves, but it remains on the bottom rung of documentary filmmaking.
When trying to ensure I had details correct about the series’ premiere, I came across multiple other Salem-based documentaries produced by National Geographic. With that in mind, why waste time on Salem as a subject again unless you had new details to share? Especially when it feels that the only change is “we gave the historians some creepy lighting, ‘cause witches.”
Overall, Witches: Truth Behind the Trials delivers the correct information for those who are seeking out facts about these tumultuous times. Yet, for a casual viewer, there’s nothing to keep you engaged. Mind you, I’m not saying use The Craft as your basis for a comprehensive knowledge about witchcraft…but there’s bound to be more engaging documentary filmmaking on the subject elsewhere.
Witches: Truth Behind the Trials premieres September 29th at 9pm ET on National Geographic and streams the next day on Hulu and Disney+