The movie that gave chills to the king of horror Stephen king
The Witch is subtitled A New England Folk Tale, and it walks a curious line between faithful period detail and supernatural weirdness. A postscript notes that its dialogue was inspired by court transcripts of the 1630s, the early Puritan era in which it’s set; like the many hokey tales of women in bonnets that have preceded it, it features a pious family with a growing suspicion of witchcraft. The only difference is that almost immediately, the audience sees that the threat is real—there is evil in the wood, and it intends wicked misfortune. The movie’s first-time director, Robert Eggers, blends authenticity with black magic, and the result is giddying.
In the film’s early scenes, a New England family are turfed out of their village because of their religious beliefs and forced to live on the edge of the wilderness, after which they lose their infant son in a mysterious kidnapping. The patriarch, William (Ralph Ineson), professes piety while trying to hide prideful transgressions; his wife Katherine (Kate Dickey) fears that their son was taken to answer for their sins; and their eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) provokes suspicion from her parents with her precocious and outspoken behavior. The audience sees exactly who took the baby—a wizened crone, shot in shadow, played by the wonderfully named Bathsheba Garnett—but this does nothing to blunt the film’s mounting tension.
Like many an indie horror sensation, The Witch succeeds not by action, or the specter of its central monster, but by its immersive details. From the family’s sad bundles of corn, which quickly wither in the face of unknown evil, to their simple prayer sessions shot entirely by candlelight, the disaster of their new life away from civilization comes into clearer and clearer focus, starting with the mundane (hunger, crop failure) and building to the symbolic (Thomasin milks Black Philip, and all he produces is blood). This tension finally crests into a dizzying final act that flips the audience’s expectations on their heads.
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