Be ye willing to lend ear to old English? I pray thee, that thine do be just and willing to do so, so that ye shall harvest thine fruit of enchantment and fear from The Witch. I am rubbish at pretending to have the skills to use a dated tongue, but the scriptwriter for The Witch (Robert Eggers, who also directed it) nails it perfectly. I bring up the dialogue style because I know that it has been the source of some confusion for some movie goers. It takes an attentive ear to follow the conversations in the film, and it takes an equal amount of patience. However, if you are able and willing to work through that you are in for the year's best psychological horror film so far.
It is easy to give it that praise based off of two reasons. Reason the first, there have been few decent movies hitting the theatres so far in 2016. Reason the second, it is a really good horror flick. Based in the 1600's, it is about a family that gets exiled from their community after the father has been accused of heresy.
The location of the film is around the farm that they create, roughly a day's ride from the village. They live in isolation, surrounded by the dark woods. It is the perfect place for the imagination to take you for walks through the dark creations of the mind. Robert Eggers makes the most of the stunning isolation, turning it into an incubator for the suspicions and desires of the characters in the film. With this being Eggers' first feature film, he shows an understanding of how to transpose the vision he has onto the screen, making great use of pauses in the film, cinematography, dialogue, and music to create the tension.
The Witch is a definitive slow burn horror. That is not me saying that it is boring or a slog. Not by any means am I inferring that. It is a captivating tale that focuses on the religious leanings of the family and how superstition about witchcraft is granted birth after some very serious instances happen. Eggers uses wonderful pacing to unravel the tale in which a secluded family begins turning on each other over stresses from catastrophe.
Yes, I am being vague about the plot points of this film, but I think it is best if there is very little known going into it. It is all about how it develops and unfolds that feeds the beast of intrigue and suspense. Some things are best experienced first hand.
It would be impossible to write about this review and not to mention the impressive performance for the feature film debuting actress Anya Taylor-Joy. She leads the charge as the main character, the teenage daughter Thomasin, whom the majority of the story revolves around. Anya delivers a well rounded performance that keeps the audience invested emotionally in the tale. She shows through her skills that she will be a talent that is going to be around in films for a long time to come.
The one negative that I can give about this movie is that perhaps it could have ended a few minutes earlier. This is not a comment on the run time, but more about what Eggers chooses to expose in the final moments of the film. Some things are best left to the imagination, and a little too much gets exposed when the rest of the film is a lot more cryptic. I was left with a similar feeling as when I saw The Last Exorcism, a great film that built a lot on mystery and doubt only to show the answer to all of the questions in the final moments.
Let that criticism not be enough to keep you from seeing the film. It is just something that took away the whooshing of the wind in my sails and killed the adrenaline that had been built up over the prior hour and an half. This is a must see for horror fans, but also serves as a good gate-way into the genre. It is a wonderful microcosm of human nature's need to pin reason the the unexplained and the division that can quickly appear when despair is rampant.
Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars
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