If you walk into The Witch (or The Witch: A New England Folktale, if we’re using the full title) expecting a horror film that is meant to get the teenagers screaming and the person next to you to jump into your lap on a date night, then you may be sorely disappointed.
However, The Witch does manage to create a suspenseful aura throughout until the movie reaches a fever-pitch conclusion: a conclusion that has given The Witch an early lead in the running for my favorite movie of the year.
The Witch is simple enough. A Puritan family, in the decades before the infamous Salem Witch Trials, has been banished from their village (for reasons that are never fully explained) and left to rebuild out in the wilderness. But, as is the case in most horror films, they are not alone.
As tensions mount and the events that occur to the family become more dangerous, the family begins to turn on itself. Maybe someone in the family is a witch. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe the witch does live in the forest. Maybe there is no witch at all.
To find the answer, the viewer will have to watch and find out for him or herself and I suggest that anyone who is interested should investigate.
The plot, simple though it may be, sustains tension throughout the film’s lean 92-minute runtime. Writer/director Robert Eggers has created a film (a first film, nonetheless) that is Kubrickian in nature. He has created a film of great detail and intense mood.
I don’t mean to say Kubrickian in that the film feels like Stanley Kubrick light. It doesn’t. If anything, I actually like The Witch better than most of Kubrick’s entries into the horror genre. But it is worth noting, that Eggers attention to period detail and language is reminiscent of the same attention that Kubrick would put into his films.
The cinematography by Jarin Blaschke is so natural and atmospheric that I was reminded of the recently lauded The Revenant. I couldn’t help but think that for the same effect, The Witch was probably shot much quicker and much cheaper.
Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, the teenage daughter of the family, leads the film. She masters the film’s period dialogue and manages to do some solid dramatic acting in a role that might shackle a less-capable performer. Ralph Ineson is the other standout in the cast as William, the patriarch of the family.
This may not be eloquent criticism, but this guy has the coolest voice. Everything he says is delivered with the intensity and gravitas. Every line sounds like the most essential strand of words ever delivered by a human mouth.
Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson all make up the most of the rest of the family and all meld together well in a sturdy ensemble. The Witch is receiving a lot of ringing endorsements. Stephen King said via tweeting that the movie “scared the hell out of” him. The film has also been endorsed by the Satanic Temple and, according to IMDB, claiming it “ that will inform contemporary discussion of religious experience.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t know how much of a religious experience this movie will be for non-Satanists, but I do have to join both the Satanic Temple and Stephen King (as well as the many other critics endorsing this movie) in saying that you should definitely go see The Witch.
I doubt that I will see anything like it for the rest of the year.
Brian Laughran
Editor-in-Chief