It is the kind of movie that would have been on endless cable repeats a few decades ago, isn't it?

You aren't the only one to think that — Rohan Naahar of the Hindustan Times says this is in the same vein, but makes Jupiter Ascending look like a "masterpiece":

What's funny is, if it had been done as a play, by enthusiastic amateurs, with actual flat painted canvas backdrops? Would have been CUBITS better, at least!

Hindustan Times reviewer explicitly compared it to Jupiter Ascending, and says Jupiter Ascending comes off WAY better, as it happens…

They renamed Bast "Hathor" because Hathor is the only Egyptian goddess their target market recognizes, because Stargate.

They renamed her "Memphis" and fridged her like Frigga…

Sharknado is the 21st century equivalent of the Beach Blanket movies…

And RAWR! So much more…appealing, than Blandy McBlanderson the nominal hero! Your teenaged correspondent was quite confused by her reactions to the purported villain of the piece — of course he shouldn't have been sacrificing people against their will, but what was wrong with Ankhsenamon II that she had to be…

With Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the lord of Lu, Charles Dance as the lord of Qi, and the dancing girls provided by Victoria's Secret! (The war-horses will be mechanical and CGI, by Michael Bay.)

You've seen "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", right?

If it weren't insulting enough to cast a token black guy as an ineffectual Thoth — and a pair of token Asian women as Mesopotamian goddesses, taking a Nile holiday package tour, I presume? "Feed the sacred crocodiles, ride the giant cobras!" — the utter disregard for every bit of actual Egyptian mythology save the…

Woad has the exact same pigment as indigo and grows in northern Europe. Weld and other plants from the north produce a bright solar yellow, and madder and brazilwood (not from Brazil! from the "Indies") give a range from deep red to hot pink, using ancient recipies. Google them for pics of yarns dyed with these plants…

Ooh, ooh, why not a movie that suggest that the mediaeval Blood Libels were correct next?

You would be wrong. The Dominicans were the religious order that ran the Inquisitions. Aquinas laid down the foundations of justification for murdering dissenters in the Summa Theologica, here:

Right! Who says movies connect with real life? They're completely about aliens, entirely unrelated to anything going on in the world around the filmmakers!

What I want to know is, with the whole field of historical and fictional subjects open to them, why have so many major as well as minor Hollywood players recently devoted SO much time and energy to putting forth the idea, "What if witches really were all wicked destroyers of mankind, after all?"

No, I haven't, I have a demanding work schedule and I am accepting that the movie's defenders are accurately describing it. If you aren't, then of course my objections to this film's ethos won't hold — but my arguments about how historical fiction is NOT a true reflection of the time it is set in, but the author's own…

You know, they might really have been kidnapping little blond English boys for cult sacrifice and cannibalism, too! Somebody should do a grim'n'gritty cod-mediaeval movie about St Hugh and William of Norfolk and boldly suggest they really were used for blood rituals by those foreign unbelievers! I mean, hey, it's just…

No, but your argument has nothing to do with that. The Witch IS a portrait of the fears of the time — our time, the same way that The Crucible was a portrait of the fears of our time in the Cold War, NOT the fears of the sixteen hundreds. Because that's how historical fiction works. Eggers isn't a man of the Baroque…

But then there wouldn't have been enough room for burly guys punching each other through buildings!