(SPOILER ALERT)
Can someone please clarify? I rented this on Amazon and its now expired so I can't watch it immediately. So.... She was executed as a witch even though she was innocent, and all of the torture tactics turned her into a demon? Or..... What???????? And the ruin writings??
Ok, so one, they don't actually know what happened, they were mainly coming up with conjecture.
What they do know about her body: She grew up wearing a corset, was drugged with a paralytic plant, tied down and had her limbs smashed, had her tongue cut out and a molar pulled, was sexually violated with a knife or similar, stabbed in the chest/abdomen several times, forced to swallow a cloth bundle, ritualistically tattooed, and finally set on fire. Her body also bleeds and is in a life-like, loose state without rigor.
For some reason, she only shows evidence of these acts on the inside of her body, including the tattooing, stabs, and bruising, not the outside. Any of her organs removed from her body decompose rapidly, while those remaining inside are preserved. Her cells are still alive and functioning.
What ties her to witchcraft, specifically Salem:
Her body- She grew up wearing a corset, and was drugged using a plant, rather than more effective and readily available modern medicines. This points to her being from an older era when such things would be normal. The tattoos appear to be mystical/magical symbols of an astrological nature, though don't quote me on that.
The region- the Jimson weed in her stomach and peat found under her nails are from the North Eastern region of the United States, which is also where Salem, Massachusetts is.
The cloth- the cloth itself appears old and handwoven, and references Leviticus 20:27 "Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God." (KJ version.) This verse is misquoted in the film as "Any man or woman who consults the spirits of the dead shall be put to death, for they are a witch, and their blood shall be on their own hands." The cloth also has 1693 written on it, which they assume is the year (there is no Leviticus 16:93). The Salem witch trials ran from February 1692-May 1693, so the year also aligns with the witch trials.
Side note: I personally could not read the 1692 date on the screen, so I don't know if it was written "MDCXCIII" or "XVI IXII". If it is the first, then it is most likely a date. If the second, Leviticus 1:6 "And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into his pieces." and Leviticus 9:3 "And unto the children of Israel thou shalt speak, saying, Take ye a kid of the goats for a sin offering; and a calf and a lamb, both of the first year, without blemish, for a burnt offering;"-- these may indicate she was an innocent made to hold the sins of others (which is what a sin offering is) and then flayed/burnt.
Now, a possible date, corsetry, and just being from the North East is a bit of a stretch to say that she was directly involved with the Salem witch trials. But, they made that leap. From there, they took the following assumptions:
1) There were no real witches found during the Salem witch trials, only innocents died.
2) Whomever did what they did to her wanted her to suffer.
3) The bible quote is anti-witch
From these three assumptions they decide that Jane Doe had been an innocent, non-supernatural girl from Salem, and that those who killed her were witch hunters or similar, and they had been trying to purge her of witchcraft through torture and ritual. If she started innocent, than whatever they did to her is what caused her current cursed condition. They assume it was an unintentional accident, rather than by design, since witch hunters would not want to make a demonic, eternally living corpse. If this was unintentional, it could have been caused either because of her suffering (such as: her wrath and injustice was strong enough to keep her going after warping into a curse) or by the incorrect application of tattoos and ritualistic killing, or possibly a combination of both.
However, it could just as easily be assumed that witches killed her and turned her into this thing on purpose.
1) The cloth does not have a month or day, so it could have happened after the trials, or even in an entirely different town.
2) The torture was extremely deliberate, extensive, ritualized, and intended to kill the victim, rather than question.
3) Her tongue was cut out. Typically, the goal of a witch hunter during torture is to gain confession. Cutting out her tongue would have run against that goal.
4) The bible quote is not exactly anti-witch. They did not go with "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". Instead, the real verse speaks about corruption and becoming tainted by associating with the dead and those who speak with the dead.This could mean that the performers of the ritual are hoping the girl becomes corrupted through association, or, using just the movie verse, that they hope she will be able to speak to the dead and was intended as a tool to do so. Movie version states that witches are responsible for their own deaths. The bit about their blood being on their own hands may even point to Jane Doe volunteering for this.
5) It is unlikely that witch hunters would use mystical spells and symbols.
6) There was a comment that the girl appears like "a human sacrifice". Witch hunters would not sacrifice a girl.
Under this assumption, Jane Doe was either a victim captured by witches and turned into this creature on purpose, or perhaps even volunteered for the opportunity.
A third option would be:
Jane Doe had been a witch or medium herself and she was ritualistically killed by witch hunters who were either using the symbols and ritual to contain/punish her forever with unforeseen side effect, used them incorrectly, resulting in her becoming this creature, or were unaware that she had the marks and cloth on her in a bid to live on (after a fashion) after they'd killed her. It is possible that she had inborn powers, such as the regenerative abilities and controlling the dead, that the symbols on the cloth were meant to contain and keep in a death-like status (evidence for this: she is able to heal herself after the cloth is removed via the deaths of the living. Either this is a new ability because they removed the cloth, or she was in a much worse state when she was originally found in the basement and healed to her current level through the deaths of those in the house) This is possible if the main character's first assumption, that only innocents died in Salem, is incorrect and some witches did die. It would also account for her level of malevolence. If she had been fully innocent, it is less likely she'd take such apparent joy in harming innocent parties, such as those in the house or the main characters.
In short, we have no idea, neither did the characters though they went with the "she was innocent, and turned into this accidentally" explanation.
hmmmm??? Is there anyway you could elaborate a little???
Just kidding! That was like the most information Analysis I have ever received! Loved it and gave me a lot of insight!
Thank you!
Lol, I had a lot of fun writing it!
I personally don't buy the whole she's from the 17th century/ Salem thing. Mainly because I share the same view of clues as Sam Vimes from the Terry Pratchett books:
He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement.-Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
But that doesn't explain the trauma inside her body which are not reflected outside nor the tattoos on the inside of her skin but not outside. Those all seem like supernatural elements to me, as well as what happened to both father and son, so whatever the explanation, the girl was clearly tortured, wore a corset, and there is a supernatural mystery about her.
shareI thought she was reenergizing her body with each person who she killed. And it started with her skin. She even had to waste The Tilden’s deaths on old stuff (resewing her body together) because they autopsied her. Ultimately as she kills more, her whole body will be alive and she’ll walk again.
shareBut anyway there was supernatural things going on?
shareSounds like Sherlock Holmes
shareWow, I wanted to answer, but you made a deep analysis, witch left me in silence (which... lol). Despite it's length it was a very informative and interesting reading. Thanks.
shareI think the writers want us to believe, as Tommy does, that she started as an innocent girl, and that the torture turned her into an evil undead witch.
I don’t find that entirely satisfactory, for a couple of reasons:
Tommy starts by disbelieving in witches. He says that, since there are no actual witches, the Salem prosecutors only tried and punished innocent women. Later, as he accepts that her body seems to have supernatural powers, he starts to speculate that the punishments somehow made her into a witch. So now he does believe in witches. But in that case, why wouldn’t he accept the simpler explanation he had rejected at first, that she was a witch all along?
The other problem with the innocent-becomes-witch theory, as blatherskitenoir mentions above, is that we are left with the uncomfortable idea of an innocent victim becoming evil through her suffering. (This is, though, a common trope in horror b-movies: a science experiment goes wrong, the scientist turns into a monster and goes on a rampage.)
The impression I get is that the writers started with a very simple pitch - dead girl turns up at isolated morgue but she’s not really dead - and then just freestyled the backstory as needed to keep the suspense and jump scares flowing.
You kinda spoiled the movie in the title of your post... Not good. You didn't spoiled it to me tho, cause I already watched it months ago...
shareFunny how you put “spoiler” in the body of the your post but also put an actual spoiler in the subject line.
share