Written by: Kevin Berge
Witches are scary and all, but I'd be much more scared of meeting a bunch of Christian Puritans. (Image Courtesy of: thatmomentin.com)
Quick Take: The Witch is horror filmmaking at its most brilliant, using pure tension and fear to slowly and creepily dissect its characters. With a commanding performance from Anya Taylor-Joy and steady writing and direction that shows and rarely tells, it is a film that creeps up and keeps hold long after it has ended.
***This is an in-depth review of The Witch, focusing on how the movie tells its story and influences the horror genre. There will be spoilers, and I would implore any reader to watch the movie first before reading ahead to get a better scope of the review.***
I don't watch horror movies. It's a conceit I formed early in my youth. I thought they were all made for one purpose: to make you jump. I hated things that made me jump. I get rattled by just an unexpected touch on the shoulder, and horror movies sounded like another way to make me feel weak.
Horror just like any genre though is far more than simple jump scares. In truth, the defining trait of the genre is simple: evoke fear. Many of the classic horror films are about big evil monsters that keep coming around to kill, and I don't believe those will ever be my style.
I have come though to recently be drawn into a certain brand of horror, the psychological. More than any other film, I accredit The Witch as the movie that has drawn me into the subgenre, quickly becoming one of my favorite films and one I have watched too many times in a short period since I first saw it earlier this year.
This film follows a Puritan family in the 17th century who have been cast out of a Puritan plantation for differences in religious interpretation, forced to make a living in the forest only for the fifth child of the family to go missing. This starts a steady decline in sanity among the family as they turn on one another in fear and hatred.
Immediately, the movie is drowned in dissonance. Mark Korven's (Cube) score makes even zooming in on a tree feel off. There is no melody and often few recognizable sounds behind the music. Korven has stated that the primary instrument used in the construction was a nyckelharpa, sounding obviously old fashion but also intensely dark.
Director and screenwriter Robert Eggers (The Tell-Tale Heart) has a focus driven by setting. The period setting is meticulously created to authenticity including using entirely old English for the dialogue while the mood is set by how contained the family feel in their small home surrounded by foreboding woods in all directions.
Subtitled A New-England Folktale, this is a simple story with a direct thematic focus. It does not show anything more than what is necessary, making every shot count. For how unsettling it is, this is a personal story, dominated by the focus on its characters rather than the monster in their midst.
I don't watch horror movies. It's a conceit I formed early in my youth. I thought they were all made for one purpose: to make you jump. I hated things that made me jump. I get rattled by just an unexpected touch on the shoulder, and horror movies sounded like another way to make me feel weak.
Horror just like any genre though is far more than simple jump scares. In truth, the defining trait of the genre is simple: evoke fear. Many of the classic horror films are about big evil monsters that keep coming around to kill, and I don't believe those will ever be my style.
I have come though to recently be drawn into a certain brand of horror, the psychological. More than any other film, I accredit The Witch as the movie that has drawn me into the subgenre, quickly becoming one of my favorite films and one I have watched too many times in a short period since I first saw it earlier this year.
This film follows a Puritan family in the 17th century who have been cast out of a Puritan plantation for differences in religious interpretation, forced to make a living in the forest only for the fifth child of the family to go missing. This starts a steady decline in sanity among the family as they turn on one another in fear and hatred.
Immediately, the movie is drowned in dissonance. Mark Korven's (Cube) score makes even zooming in on a tree feel off. There is no melody and often few recognizable sounds behind the music. Korven has stated that the primary instrument used in the construction was a nyckelharpa, sounding obviously old fashion but also intensely dark.
Director and screenwriter Robert Eggers (The Tell-Tale Heart) has a focus driven by setting. The period setting is meticulously created to authenticity including using entirely old English for the dialogue while the mood is set by how contained the family feel in their small home surrounded by foreboding woods in all directions.
Subtitled A New-England Folktale, this is a simple story with a direct thematic focus. It does not show anything more than what is necessary, making every shot count. For how unsettling it is, this is a personal story, dominated by the focus on its characters rather than the monster in their midst.
I guess that's one way to introduce yourself to the world. (Image Courtesy of: indiewire.com)
There is a witch in this story, stealing the children, and there is a devil corrupting the land. However, both beings are secondary, their presence hardly stands out. It is their effect on the family that matters for they bring out from the family a paranoia that defines this folktale's message.
This is a tale about religion, particularly a look at how one's religious belief can be twisted into hypocrisy and cruelty. William (Ralph Ineson) and Katherine (Kate Dickie), the mother and father, hold to their beliefs steadfast as if they protect them and make them better, but they quickly become a crutch then an anchor particularly as their sins grow.
Too quickly, the oldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) becomes the object of their scorn and pain, mirroring how the witch trials of the time overtook the colonies. The young daughter is blamed for the disappearances of her siblings and forced into worse and worse conditions until she is labelled the witch of their suffering.
It is painful to watch Thomasin's suffering, played brilliantly by Anya Taylor-Joy (Split) in her first starring role. She must face headlong the dark side of the religion she has been taught to trust, demeaned and victimized as she is becoming a woman, until she is left with nothing but a half-hearted freedom.
The climax of this film is painful and breathtaking, the one classic horror scene in the movie but still drenched in grime and a claustrophobic realism. It is the culmination of the family's failure to stand up to a test of fate and Thomasin's break from the pain and madness, finally able to escape after bathing in her mother's blood.
Despite seeming straightforward, it leaves an impossible to answer question at its end: has Thomasin been freed or damned? The movie can be seen as a feminist tale of release from oppression if her final moments, taking the chance to live "deliciously" offered by the devil and joining the witches, are meant to be seen as liberating.
However, the nagging of this film makes the question uncertain. She is no longer oppressed, but she is also left with nothing, no family, no faith, no understanding. She is left to become what she was accused of being, and her transformation could just be another oppression, a tragic corruption of what was left of her.
It is disturbingly unclear which is why the film leaves such an impression. While it is only 90 minutes long, watching The Witch is a four-hour (if not more) experience for the amount of time it lingers, gnawing at the mind long after the movie has ended. It is the rare movie that I take more from every time I watch it which is why it has become so quickly one of my favorite films.
This is a tale about religion, particularly a look at how one's religious belief can be twisted into hypocrisy and cruelty. William (Ralph Ineson) and Katherine (Kate Dickie), the mother and father, hold to their beliefs steadfast as if they protect them and make them better, but they quickly become a crutch then an anchor particularly as their sins grow.
Too quickly, the oldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) becomes the object of their scorn and pain, mirroring how the witch trials of the time overtook the colonies. The young daughter is blamed for the disappearances of her siblings and forced into worse and worse conditions until she is labelled the witch of their suffering.
It is painful to watch Thomasin's suffering, played brilliantly by Anya Taylor-Joy (Split) in her first starring role. She must face headlong the dark side of the religion she has been taught to trust, demeaned and victimized as she is becoming a woman, until she is left with nothing but a half-hearted freedom.
The climax of this film is painful and breathtaking, the one classic horror scene in the movie but still drenched in grime and a claustrophobic realism. It is the culmination of the family's failure to stand up to a test of fate and Thomasin's break from the pain and madness, finally able to escape after bathing in her mother's blood.
Despite seeming straightforward, it leaves an impossible to answer question at its end: has Thomasin been freed or damned? The movie can be seen as a feminist tale of release from oppression if her final moments, taking the chance to live "deliciously" offered by the devil and joining the witches, are meant to be seen as liberating.
However, the nagging of this film makes the question uncertain. She is no longer oppressed, but she is also left with nothing, no family, no faith, no understanding. She is left to become what she was accused of being, and her transformation could just be another oppression, a tragic corruption of what was left of her.
It is disturbingly unclear which is why the film leaves such an impression. While it is only 90 minutes long, watching The Witch is a four-hour (if not more) experience for the amount of time it lingers, gnawing at the mind long after the movie has ended. It is the rare movie that I take more from every time I watch it which is why it has become so quickly one of my favorite films.
