I'll tell you why so serious

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

While the setting and the historical source of the movie is that of the late 17th century, don't be fooled, this is a movie about communism. More accurately, about the wretched logic the communist justice system has used to imprison and kill hundreds of people in the Czechoslovakian 50s. The forced confessions, self-accusal, torture and naming of innocent accomplices were all part of communist processes in which such as Milada Horáková perished.There are plenty of analogies in the movie which I don't intend to spoil. The atmosphere is crafted masterfully, giving the film a bleak and dark look and amplifying the effects of its story. The performances are very good, however I don't know how well does the original czech translate into the subtitles. What keeps this from being a 10 out of 10 is the pacing. In a certain point of the movie, the end becomes obvious and the rest is just a hammer that drives the nail of absolute despair into your brain.

Arthur Miller may have written his knockout play The Crucible condemning witch hunts in 1952, but that doesn't mean the Czechs should be denied the opportunity to take a shot at capturing the subject matter. Coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain, Witches' Hammer achieves basically the same thing, highlighting the inherent injustice in torturing innocent people into confessing witchcraft, and then brutally executing them. What we have here is evil disguised as good, and when a priest points that out, he becomes a target in the hunt as well.The movie starts with a heavy indication of the misogyny found in witch trials. A man says woman is sin. This is juxtaposed against women bathing, and while you may call that gratuitous nudity, it is basically a contrasting view of women not as evil beings, but just women.After this, the movie simply shows us the process of witch trials, which the modern day audience will recognize as backwards. But were audiences also supposed to recognize it as something else? If Miller was attacking McCarthyism, could this movie in fact be attacking the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia? I'm not so sure. Nothing seems overly communist about the inquisitors. On the contrary, they're driven by a warped form of religion rather than an atheist leftist doctrine. Of course, tyranny can look much the same no matter what ideology is being used to justify it.Ultimately, Witches' Hammer may not be quite as great as Miller's play, but it is better than the 1996 film adaptation of Miller's play. A savage view of Europe's past, it is a film worth seeing.

This is a recreation of a series of witch trials that occurred around 1600. Since it's a Czechoslovakian film, I assume it is set somewhere around there. The film begins with an odd occurrence--an old lady pretends to eat a communion wafer at church but instead shoves it into a handkerchief. When confronted about this weird behavior, folks immediately assume it's because she's involved with witches and that these devil worshipers plan on using the host for some unholy ceremony. THe woman really is just very superstitious and she's really taking the wafer to trade someone--as they want to use the wafer to supposedly cure a sick animal. This is goofy--but the priest certainly does not think it constitutes witchcraft and admonishes everyone to forget about it. However, the elders insist on bringing in a witch-finder and determining if it's all part of a demonic ceremony. From there, everything gets way out of hand and they start burning practically anyone--all due to an overzealous and evil man bent on abusing the gullibility of others.The film gets very high marks for realism. The torture and subsequent confessions seem very well done--though are a bit difficult to watch. And, the entire abuse of the silly system and complicity of the Church is quite interesting--as well as the lone priest who fights this evil tribunal. My only complaint is the opening scene. It's jam-packed full of very gratuitous nudity. Later, there is some explicit nudity but it is necessary for the film and should have been used (such as when they stripped the lady to look for 'the Devil's mark' on her as well as to humiliate her). So, the violence and nudity make it a film I would NOT recommend to your kids or mother-in-law! Otherwise, extremely well done but possibly not the sort of thing you'd want to watch (it can be a bit hard to take).

This film claims historical accuracy, but it seems to be more allegorical than similar films which don't make that claim. I'm still trying to decide how exaggerated some of the "confessions" were, but then again this is a period of history I know little about. The Christ figure was interesting, and the parallel was loose enough to be interesting, but it was made too explicit at times to be considered very clever. Explicitly calling one of his "friends" a Judas is a little too much. Huxley created a more interesting Christ-figure in "Devil's of Loudon," voluptuous, yet gifted and filled with a righteous aim.What was most interesting to me was how the hypocrisy of those on high was related to the camera. Not in an exaggerated way, but in a way where we are given insight into the decisions being made, and witness the final hypocritical decision. The Queen anxiously touches her neck when she hears that one of the "witches" has been strangled, only to gracefully gaze at her complexion in the mirror and fix her makeup. A beautiful symbol of priorities, and how a minor amount of sympathy is trumped by pride. Another scene placed the Inquisitor in a large chair sipping on a snifter of wine, dictating to his secretary a letter describing the trial, asking him to underline how "horrified" they were at what they discovered, when of course, he hardly seems horrified anymore.Throughout the film is the battle between what to implicitly express visually, and what to explicitly allude to, and they don't often work well together. Still, there are enough scenes which focus on the former to overshadow the latter.3 out of 5 - Some strong elements