‘Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale’ Review: Human Drama Proves More Compelling Than Supernatural Trappings in AMC+ Series
While its title and its availability on AMC+ (in addition to Sundance Now) might suggest otherwise, Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale is less akin to Interview With the Vampire or Mayfair Witches than to crime dramas like Big Little Lies or Mare of Easttown — albeit with less prestige gloss and more janky CG. Though that comparison doesn’t feel quite right, either.
What’s most memorable about the series is neither its supernatural elements, which are only vaguely explained, nor even really its central murder mystery. It’s the clear and unsparing portrait of its villain, a woman who weaponizes her genuine grief over the death of her son into a literal witch hunt, with shocking and horrifying results.
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Upon first glance, Sanctuary looks every inch the Edenic retreat suggested by its name, a cluster of picturesque homes nestled amid rolling green hills. During a picnic for new neighbors, Sarah (Elaine Cassidy) praises the community’s welcoming attitude toward witches like herself, historically a persecuted population, while her best friend, Abigail (Amy De Bhrún), extols the benefits of Sarah’s gift. But Sanctuary, created by Debbie Horsfield and based on the book by V.V. James, casts this kumbaya vision of togetherness only to show us how easily it can crumble. When Abigail’s teenage son (Max Lohan’s Daniel) dies in a fall, Sarah’s daughter, Harper (Hazel Doupe), comes under suspicion almost instantly — despite the dearth of evidence that magic was involved, or that Harper possesses the ability to use it in the first place.
Sanctuary packs in enough twists to keep its seven hour-long episodes moving along at a brisk clip, but its more fantastical elements are deployed sparingly. Though we often see Sarah at work — waving her fingers, concocting potions, conjuring CG sparks and smoke plumes — the series spends very little time explaining its occult lore. And while members of a larger mystical community occasionally drop by, like a lawyer who specializes in supernatural cases, Sarah is the only known witch among the main characters and indeed among the town’s entire population. As detective Maggie (Stephanie Levi-John, warm and steady) probes deeper into the circumstances surrounding Daniel’s death, she uncovers less wizardry than plain old human toxicity: old grudges, ugly secrets, jealousy and misogyny.
Maggie’s investigation, however, is enormously complicated by Abigail’s singleminded mission to wreak vengeance on the friend she blames for Daniel’s absence. Abigail is at no point a “likable” person; even in happier times, she comes off like the smuggest of queen bees. Still, the enormity of her loss renders her sympathetic enough that even as Abigail’s actions turn increasingly monstruous, it’s difficult to pinpoint a single moment when her understandable grief curdles into unforgivable cruelty. Throughout, De Brhún’s ferocious performance lets us into Abigail’s inner workings. In her eyes, we can see the moments when Abigail almost realizes the vileness of her actions — and the chilling moments, immediately afterward, when she makes the choice not to.
The characters around Abigail are not drawn with near the same sharpness. In part, it’s a function of the narrative’s need to keep secrets. Doupe imbues her character with an adolescent brattiness that’s equal parts endearing and frustrating, just as real teenagers tend to be — but Harper’s deeper motivations and desires remain necessarily opaque until the very end of the season, when one character finally just sits down and spells out everything that’s happened to another. As for Sarah, it’s easy to feel for her as she watches the same people she’s helped with her powers turn around and condemn her for them. But Sanctuary eventually takes too light a touch with Sarah’s own considerable transgressions, preferring to keep her in the cleaner and less complex role of put-upon victim.
Once the dust settles on Sanctuary‘s devastating climax, what lingers in the memory is not Sarah’s plight, but Abigail’s reign of terror. The witch-hunt premise carries obvious echoes of our own world, but the series (wisely) avoids drawing too neat a parallel to any recent real-life injustices. After all, magic, as the characters often remind each other, is a mysterious force unlike any other: rare, mercurial, often inexplicable even to those endowed with the ability to channel it. Abigail’s hatred, by contrast, is all too ordinary, and all the more disturbing for that.
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