There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.¹C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil, The C. S. Lewis Signature Classic (Collins, 2012), ix.

I don’t sleep on planes. I don’t read on planes. I don’t usually work on planes. I watch films on planes, and as many as possible. Five back-to-back is my record. It’s a weakness, I know. On a recent filmathon as I flew to the States, I finally caught up on the much-hyped and Oscar-winning horror/mystery film Weapons.²Zach Cregger, dir. Weapons (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2025). Through the perspective of multiple characters, the story revolves around a suburban community’s reaction to the simultaneous overnight disappearance of all but one child in the class of teacher Justine Gandy.

Now, if I’m being honest, I’m interested intellectually in horror as a genre rather than loving and watching loads of horror films, but I deemed Weapons a film I needed to watch.³I’m currently halfway through Kutter Callaway’s entertaining and informative Christianity Today podcast on horror films, ‘Be Afraid,’ https://www.christianitytoday.com/podcasts/be-afraid/ While sitting wedged in the middle-aisle of economy watching on a small screen with tinny earphones on a day flight is sub-optimal in terms of creating ambience, the film was still disturbing and unsettling enough to get a few muffled grunts and gasps and for the adrenaline to be pumping (apologies to those on either side of me). What disturbed and unsettled me was (spoiler-alert!) that behind these child disappearances is a parasitic witch, ‘Aunt Gladys,’ who inveigles her way into the community, using blood magic to turn the children, and various adults, into weaponized ‘zombies,’ whilst also draining their own vitality to prevent her from ageing. I won’t reveal the bloody ending here, although maybe I just have…

It was Aunt Gladys and these supernatural dark occultic elements that gave me the chills and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. And yet, reading review after review and analysis after analysis, maybe my fear was misfocused. Maybe I’d naively missed the point. Apparently, what should be disturbing and unsettling me is what the critics tell me the film is really about, in the real world.⁴Harrison Brocklehurst, ‘People are clocking what makes Weapons terrifying, and it’s nothing to do with Aunt Gladys,’ Film Shrine, 18 August 2025, https://tinyurl.com/55cxt8cf. Aunt Gladys and her dark arts are an allegory, a metaphor and a cipher for a legion of cultural, political and gendered readings: of mass hysteria and grief within a community; of gun ownership and school shootings in America; of the destruction that substance abuse and addiction can cause within the family unit; and of the demonisation, or maybe ‘witchification,’ of the middle-aged unmarried women within Western society.⁵Beatrice Loayza, ‘Nothing Is Scarier Than an Unmarried Woman,’ The Atlantic, 13 August 2025, https://tinyurl.com/snk5wyeu.

While I’m all for allegory, metaphor and ciphers, and while these ‘real world’ themes are indeed important and need to be reflected upon seriously, my Weapons experience prompted again a thought that has been with me for some time. Yes, we may be living through a golden age of horror, not simply in terms of proliferation and quality of output but where, after years of being overlooked, the genre is finally being recognised at major mainstream awards ceremonies. However, we are certainly also living through a curious age of occult demythologisation and which, whether we’re Christians or not, should make us unsettled and disturbed.

I had that same feeling as I watched the recent 28 Years later: The Bone Temple.⁶Nia DaCosta, dir. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Sony Pictures, 2026). Set in a United Kingdom still ravaged by the ‘infected,’ the film follows 12-year-old Spike as he is inducted into a sadistic cult led by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal. Along the way, Spike encounters the humane and humanistic Dr. Ian Kelso (played by Fiennes), who works from a vast ossuary on a cure for the disease. The film’s central cult is explicitly Satanic. Preaching with an inverted cross round his neck, Crystal preaches that the global virus proves God has abandoned the world and now Satan reigns. However, Crystal is manipulative and ultimately fraudulent, his power and authority relying on convincing his followers that he has a direct line to his father ‘old Nick.’ Not so subtly, the film repeatedly suggests that the occult elements are social control mechanisms rather than evidence of genuine supernatural power. There’s even an element of comedic trivialisation as Dr. Kelson is forced to impersonate Satan through pyrotechnics, hallucinogens and ‘The Number of the Beast’ by Iron Maiden, exposing how supernatural and occult symbolism can be manufactured. There are indeed dark demons out there, but they turn out to be human, all too human. It’s all immanentised.

Indeed, as I write this, both Weapons and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple are probably now somewhat passé. It’s Obsession⁷Curry Barker, dir. Obsession (Universal Pictures, 2025). that everyone is talking about (which I’ve not yet seen and probably won’t (!)) but with the same patterns of hermeneutical demythologisation. Bear, a lonely guy who works in a music store, uses a cursed ‘One Wish Willow’ to force his co-worker, on whom he has a crush, to fall in love with him. The title of the film gives an indication of what is to follow. Once again, while the framework of the film is supernatural, analyses of the film I’ve read translate it immediately into themes of coercion, control and domestic abuse. For the Christian cultural apologist who loves their analysis in the key of idolatry, there’s ripe low hanging fruit here, exploring and exposing the theme of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ But does this have to be done by instrumentalising the supernatural and occultish elements?

For the last ten years, there has been a heated debate over the term ‘elevated horror’ rightly or wrongly associated with the films of the likes of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and the production company A24. Possibly as a reaction to the gory, sadistic ‘torture porn’ films of the early 2000s: ⁸Samuel Mortel, ‘In Defense of “Elevated Horror”: Why Are So Many Fans Against It?’ The Brooklyn College Vanguard, 29 October 2025, https://tinyurl.com/3udvc7yp.

Broadly speaking, ‘elevated horror’ describes horror movies that support multiple readings. Polysemic. Fluid characters and stories you can argue about, because they defy a single interpretation. Movies that set out to explore a concept from different angles, offering hypothesis, antithesis and thesis as well as a fun ride and cheap thrills.⁹Karina Wilson, ‘What is Elevated Horror?’ The Haunted Path, 24 July 2024, https://karinawilson.substack.com/p/what-is-elevated-horror.

Many within the horror community, both fans and filmmakers, viscerally reject the term for its elitism. As one commentator notes, the term ‘writes off many horror films of the past as meaningless, while treating new allegorical horror films as some kind of novelty. The new wave of horror films that receive this label are “allowed” to be taken seriously by critics, while the many older gems of the genre are granted no such privilege.’¹⁰Marty Viltrakis, ‘Pretentious but Practical—The Case For and Against “Elevated Horror,”’ Medium, 29 October 2025, https://tinyurl.com/4bt7cd6v.

Robert S. Cairns, who interestingly is the one critic I’ve read who thinks Weapons and its director Zach Cregger might entertain a supernatural reading which takes witchcraft and evil seriously, makes a helpful comment here:

The term ‘elevated Horror’ has been discussed to death in recent years. But it’s worth noting two initially paradoxical insights from the discussion. The first, that horror films don’t always need to be ‘message’ vehicles. The second, that horror has always contained some deeper anxiety or commentary about something or other. The second point seems to me inescapably true, and the first seems to forget that the ‘message’ can also be the actual subject of the horror itself. Although multiple readings are always possible, Weapons makes as its centrepiece the de-allegorised possibility of a witch, in the same way that other readings of Jaws (1975) do not detract from the terror of a shark with dead black eyes like a doll.¹¹Robert S. Cairns, ‘What If Witches Are Actually Real? Zach Cregger’s Weapons and Witches,’ Horror Homeroom, 29 September 2025, https://tinyurl.com/bdzkhpc2.

From my readings, Cairns is in the minority here. Often the way the supernatural and the occult are treated in these films, that is, by being basically ignored, can give off an air of ‘elevated’ and patronising superiority to the more ‘literal’ readings which are deemed shallow and superficial. The Babadook¹²Jennifer Kent, dir. Babadook (Umbrella Entertainment, 2014). is not really about an evil monster in a top hat, it’s about grief and clinical depression; Sinners¹³Ryan Coogler, dir. Sinners (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2025).is not really about the vampires but racism and the Black experience in America; It Follows¹⁴David Robert Mitchell, dir. It Follows (RADiUS-TWC, 2014). is not really about being stalked by a shadowy shape-shifting entity, it’s really about sexually transmitted diseases and the loss of teenage innocence and invincibility.

To reiterate, I believe stories do signify beyond themselves.¹⁵Including stories that contain magic and sorcery. See John Piper, ‘Is There Good Magic and Edifying Sorcery?’ Desiring God, 3 February 2025, https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/is-there-good-magic-and-edifying-sorcery. Symbols matter. Metaphor matters. Allegory matters. In the words of Emily Dickinson, it’s one the purposes of art and creativity to tell the truth ‘but tell it slant.’ But we misread cultural artefacts if we assume that the signifier is merely disposable packaging for a more respectable meaning. Sometimes the supernatural in a story is not a decorative excess to be translated away but the point of the story. It’s that which is in front of us that is ‘hair-raising’ (the etymology of the word ‘horror’).

Here, though, is an interesting paradox. On the one hand, it’s becoming de rigueur to note both quantitatively and qualitatively the rising interest in contemporary culture of the supernatural among the ‘nones’: of demons, witches, hauntings, curses, possessions, and dark forces. Gen Z has been called ‘The Witchcraft generation.’¹⁶Jessica Rawnsley, ‘The witchcraft generation: Gen Z is swapping traditional faiths for magic spells,’ The New Statesmen, 14 August 2023, https://tinyurl.com/32az5u7u. See also Lauren Abunassar, ‘“Demonized, called hysterical”: the rise of witchcraft retreats where US women go to defy man and church,’ The Guardian, 10 June 2026, https://tinyurl.com/yj3dwd24. Tara Isabella Burton’s analysis in Strange Rites is seminal in this regard.¹⁷Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (Public Affairs, 2020).

On the other hand, these supernatural realities are rarely allowed to remain what they are. I’ve already mentioned their demythologisation and trivialisation. Let me briefly add two more. First, there is a humanisation. Commenting on Asian pop culture trends, including the global phenomenon’s that are Labubu toys and the KPop Demon Hunter¹⁸Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, dirs. KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix, 2025). franchise, Isabel Ong notes that

Instead of the grotesque, one-dimensional caricatures I watched and read about years ago that were most definitely 100 percent wicked—and therefore deserving of destruction—the monsters and demons that are capturing our collective consciousness today are relatable and humorous, anthropomorphized or animal-like in their expressions, body language, and actions. (Don’t get me started on Derpy, Jinu’s adorable tiger demon sidekick in KPop Demon Hunters; I’d love that plushie!).¹⁹Isabel Ong, ‘We’re Not Afraid of Monsters and Demons Anymore,’ Christianity Today, 13 August 2025, https://tinyurl.com/mrzvrh9x.

Second, there is a therapeutisation. The occult has become a consumer good, for our good. ‘Occulture’ is ubiquitous and appears in forms that feel harmless: lifestyle practices, digital rituals, aesthetic accessories, wellness vocabularies, algorithmic mythologies.²⁰Again see Burton, Strange Rites, here. I could go on and on.

How do we explain this paradox? More broadly, I think this trend defies the binary of enchantment versus disenchantment narrative, which puts me in the corner of scholars like William Cavanaugh and particularly Jason Josephson-Storm. Josephson Storm’s central argument is that modernity never eliminated belief in magic, spirits or occult thinking. Instead, it has repeatedly told itself a story of being ‘disenchanted’ while occult, paranormal and magical ideas continue to circulate in new forms. He calls this the ‘myth of disenchantment.’²¹Jason A. Josephson Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Applied to the supernatural in horror films, in the same way that Storm traces early sceptical scientists who secretly dabbled in Spiritualist and occultic practices, so today, even when horror films demythologise the occult, they often inadvertently highlight our collective obsession with it. The fact that we keep making these horror films shows that a hunger for the supernatural and the uncanny still haunts even the so-called ‘rational’ cognoscenti. But to be deemed ‘serious’ and ‘respectable,’ these yearnings must be repressed and sublimated at all costs.²²There are sociological factors in play here. In a 1995 Newsweek article, ‘Do We Need Satan?’ Kenneth L Woodward notes social class is a factor. ‘Look at the parking lot outside any church,’ suggests Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow. ‘If you see Lexuses and Cadillacs, you won’t hear Satan preached inside. If you see a lot of pickup trucks, you will.’ https://www.newsweek.com/do-we-need-satan-181030.

What, as evangelical Christians, are we to do with this paradox? We are not to be unaware of Satan’s schemes (cf. 2 Cor 2:11). The demythologising, trivialising, humanising, and therapeutising of the occult certainly are all ingenious schemes. Screwtape must be loving that the hidden (which, of course is the meaning of ‘occult’) is in plain sight.

This calls for careful discernment, and as C. S. Lewis warns us in the quotation with which I opened, the threading of a needle between scepticism on the one hand and sensationalism on the other. Just like those ‘elevated’ critics, some of us instinctively want to flatten spiritual realities into material and mythical explanations. Although it’s over forty years old, Paul Hiebert’s famous description of ‘the flaw of the excluded middle’ remains illuminating here.²³Paul G. Hiebert, ‘The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,’ Missiology 10.1 (1982): 35–47. Available here: https://kingdomupgrowth.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/p-hiebert-flaw-of-excluded-middle.pdf. Some of us in the West have been discipled, often unwittingly, within a tribe of evangelicalism that practically lives in a two-storey universe: at the top, God and ultimate theological truths; at the bottom, the empirical world of technique, management, medicine, politics and psychology. What disappears is the middle level of powers, principalities and spiritual agencies that Scripture simply assumes. Once that middle is excluded, we are left with a practical materialism that is embarrassed by demons and yet strangely fascinated by what they symbolise. Ironically, for those in theological education, we might be trained and on high-alert to the dangers of Rudolph Bultmann’s demythologisation of Jesus’s miracles and his resurrection, while being more sympathetic to occultic demythologisation. But Satan is no mere cipher, and evil is not exhausted by systems, symptoms or syndromes. We must refuse the naïve confidence that this occultic darkness is unreal. It’s all too real. Missiologically and apologetically, whilst we must recognise the cry of the spiritual hunger of those who engage in all this dark stuff,²⁴For example, see Daniel Strange, ‘Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid! Why We Pay to Be Scared’ (Keller Center Article, forthcoming). we need to remember that the Bible prohibits these practices in the strongest of terms because they are wicked and dangerous.²⁵See Kristi Mair, ‘Dark spiritual encounters and hidden dangers: The enduring wisdom of classical theology,’ Cambridge Papers, 33.4 (2024): 1–8, https://tinyurl.com/5t3xpf9f; Kirsten Birkett, Spells, Sorcerers and Spirits: Magic and the Occult in the Bible,2nd ed. (Latimer Studies, 2025); Conrad Mbewe, ‘Please! Don’t Meddle with Witchcraft,’ TGC Africa, 16 April 2016, https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/article/please-dont-meddle-with-witchcraft/. Practically, I have found this advice by Derek Rishmawy helpful when it comes to dealing with the spiritual challenges within our congregations:

The threat of syncretism isn’t just metaphorical in the West right now.… It’s probably time to start reading up on apologetics against new age spirituality, astrology, issuing serious warnings about witchcraft, etc. Yes, you need to push on late-modern, expressive-individualist consumerism, but also how easily that can coexist with checking your star sign, thinking white magic is cool, and trying to find just the right crystal to balance your energy. There is more to it than that, but these modes of thinking fit hand-in-glove. Which is to say, when it comes to preaching out of Colossians or Corinthians, talking about Christ’s defeat of the powers, not being captive to empty philosophy, or participating in pagan feasts, you may not need to find “modern”, metaphorical analogies for your applications. All of a sudden, Augustine’s sections in The Confessions refuting astrology are worth quoting from the pulpit. Maybe, just maybe, we need to start consulting with our brothers and sisters in less ‘advanced’ countries about how they preach the gospel to their neighbors caught up in the worship of spirits, and so forth.²⁶Derek Rishmawy, ‘When You Sort of Miss Disenchantment’, Reformedish, 29 December 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4ahq565. And talking of preaching, it would be remiss of me not to mention the very well-known quotation of Charles Baudelaire, in his morality tale “Le Joueur Généreux” (“The Generous Gambler”) in which he has a conversation with Satan: ‘He did not in any way be-moan the bad deputation which he enjoys in all parts of the world, assured me that he himself was the person most interested in the destruction of superstition, and confessed that he had never feared for his own power save once, on the day when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than his colleagues, cry from the pulpit: “My dear brethren, never forget, when you hear the progress of wisdom vaunted, that the cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist!”’

But there is an equal and opposite danger: we can err not only by disbelief but by unhealthy preoccupation. Some of us in the West have been discipled within a tribe of evangelicalism with an elaborate demonology, a fixation with dark powers, and an approach to spiritual warfare which is sub-biblical, distracting us from the ordinary means of grace in the gospel.²⁷I still find very helpful here David Powlison’s Power Encounters, Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare (Baker, 1995).

Biblical reality gives us a metaphysic of the Creator-creature distinction which is capacious enough to include the material and the spiritual without confusing them and without divinising them, the blurring of the Creator-creature distinction otherwise known as idolatry. Satan and the demonic are neither autonomous nor ultimate. There is a certain appropriateness to Father Gabrielle Amorth (former Chief Exorcist to the Vatican) who always began his exorcisms by thumbing his nose at the Devil. If the occult is hiding in plain sight, then so too is the gospel’s answer to the fascinations and false deliverances that the occult cannot finally satisfy. The task of Christian witness is not to sneer at that hunger, nor to sanctify it, but to recognise it, name it truthfully and expose this present darkness to the light of Christ.

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