Those of us who like horror movies know well the saga of films that make up "transcript Warren", which said goodbye last month with a final degree scroll that culminates the cycle of stories of the famous and controversial couple formed by Ed and Lorraine Warren. Some viewers consider them to be a pair of old-fashioned crusaders against evil; others, mere conjurers. Nevertheless, the issue of the cases they worked on and the popularity they achieved is undeniable, and there are numerous records of them in the press, books and films. Whether or not the viewer believes in the necessity of their work, it is, to say the least, exciting.
Played for the big screen by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, these two actors play a demonologist and a clairvoyant woman who, for fifty years, fought the most terrifying of the supernatural world. Both were practicing Catholics and collaborated with the Church, while advising religious leaders of other denominations in the fight against the forces of evil. They also gave numerous lectures at various universities, which were attended by people eager for answers to what lies beyond empirical reason.
Without considering now questions of cinematographic order, the West is living an absolutely pendulum game, that is to say, we have gone from one extreme to the other before the darkest of the supernatural: if before we appreciated the presence of evil in many places and circumstances, now we have decided to ignore its existence to the point of turning it into a genre fiction. Or worse, we have decided that everything must have a rational, scientific explanation, thus extirpating spirituality from our human nature.
However, why this interest in horror films? Despite the fact that most of the issues that deal with the supposed problems generated by the Evil One have an extraneous origin, a cause, a motive and a purpose, in some there is the face of evil, not as an abstract idea but as something concrete and quantifiable.
I do not deny the existence of disorders and pathologies in response to most paranormal events, which explain ninety-nine percent of the darkest occurrences. But what about the remaining one percent?
If in the plenary session of the Executive Council 21st century we are uncomfortable with irrationality, is there anything more irrational than seeking the pain of others for mere enjoyment? There are sick minds that respond to specific psychiatric descriptions, of course, but we cannot deny that there are twisted, objectively malign and lucid people when they act viciously and inflict harm for pure pleasure. These subject feed on the suffering of others, as if they were parasites that eat their host's interior until they colonize it completely. If we can say this about the visible world, why not about the spiritual? Although we use the supernatural as a stylistic resource , even aesthetic in its macabre aspects, we cannot deny that its worst version terrifies us. That is why we seek a scientific answer to questions that obey another plane, the immaterial.
In another film of the same genre, "Deliver Us from Evil", Father Mendoza tells Lieutenant Sarchie: "There is the primary evil, the one you know, perpetrated by man, and then there is the real evil". He refers to that for which we cannot find a scientific explanation, which has been with us since the beginning of time and which we find represented in statues, paintings and books. It is the same that appears in the Bible, in the Koran and the Talmud, the one that fights to steal our soul through a silent and invisible combat against the good, the one that lurks in the darkness, the one that stirs around us.
The three monotheistic religions share the belief in evil as an entity, represented in turn in various spirits: the Jewish mazzikin, the Muslim shayatin or the biblical demons, supernatural creatures in eternal struggle against the supreme Good and against man.
Good and evil are the two faces of reality. To deny their existence is to deprive ourselves of the mechanisms to fight against darkness. Ignoring it leaves us defenseless, without weapons to fight it, at its mercy. On the other hand, denying its existence does not make us immune to it because, as Anthony Hopkins says in "The Rite", "not believing in the devil is not going to protect you from him". But that's another story.
