“The Witch” is the 2015 debut from filmmaker Robert Eggers, and has been hailed as a horror piece that goes against the mainstream of a traditional scary movie.
If the mainstream of a traditional scary movie is a movie that’s actually scary, then it succeeds in its mandate.
Like “Hereditary,” “The Witch” has aspects that I thoroughly enjoyed. The brooding atmosphere of 1630’s New England is on flawless display. The people are simple, and their lives as basic as one could envision. They are governed by superstition and ruled by fear. It’s a period piece, and you’ll find yourself fully immersed in its atmosphere with its dark hues, rustic setting, and great score.
The characters speak in a true to form dialect that adds to the plausibility but does hinder many of the spoken lines, including parts where the accent is so thick you’ll end up missing crucial parts of the conversation.
“The Witch” (or VVitch) is a story of fear, and the theme runs the gamete from all of the characters involved. Fear of offending God and a fear of the Devil. Fear of retribution. Fear of atonement. Children fearful of their parents, and a father at times fearful of his own wife.
The star of the story is Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays teenage daughter Thomasin. Taylor-Joy is a rising talent in cinema, having since appeared in “Split.” She’s excellent here, playing what would be a typical young girl growing up in a world devoid of smart phones and Tinder.
She’s a beautiful young woman who follows the strict teachings of her parents (Ralph Ineson & Katie Dickie – both of the TV show ‘Game of Thrones’) and tries to balance her devout faith to the seemingly malignant forces that reside around her.
Like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village,” much of the terror comes from a haunting wood adjacent to the farmhouse where the family resides. We get some great quick cuts of the forest, and the viewer is left to interpret whether or not there’s an evil presence, or its just the family’s primitive ignorance.
I love Robert Eggers passion for making a film. He has a true thirst for horror and should have a long and fruitful career ahead of him. The problem with “The Witch” is that its pretty boring. The pacing is slow, and there’s little in the way of actual scares.
There’s an evil presence of some kind in the form of – what the family believes to be – a witch hiding in the forest. There’s also the satanic element funneled into the form of the goat. Not the greatest of all time, but an actual goat called Black Phillip that the younger children claim to speak with. There are too many antagonists, yet for some reason we barely get to see any of them.
The ending scene has been heralded as one of the scariest of all time. Its good, but not memorable, and if you are looking for fright, you can find it in plenty other places. I respect that “The Witch” doesn’t sink to jump scares, but its unsettling nature and obvious slap against early Christianity doesn’t hit the mark.
You may love it. Its not the type of film for everyone. There’s plenty of depth with the art, and lots of interpretations that run deeper than the actual images.
by – Matt DeCristo
