The Witch is an
excellent film that a lot of people are likely going to dismiss either because
it is a horror film or because it does not meet their expectations of what a
horror film should be. To the former, I
understand the hesitation but strongly advise giving this one a shot, and to
the latter, I also understand your feelings, but you aren’t looking at the film
in a broad enough context. Not only is
this a horror film, but it’s a family drama, a period piece, and a
social commentary on the harms of religious zealotry all rolled into one, and
it succeeds at each of those roles with a shocking degree of skill and insight
from first-time writer-director Robert Eggers.
Set in 17th century New England, William is
exiled from his Puritan village for being a religious extremist (a hell of an
accomplishment), forcing him, his wife, and five children to venture out into a
nearby forest to take a stab at living off the land. However, strange occurrences start to happen
to the family, like the disappearance of their infant child, the failure of
their crops for no readily discernible reason, and the young twin children
claiming to speak to the family ram.
What’s disconcerting about each of these circumstances is that they all
exist within the realm of possibility as non-supernatural happenings, yet the
paranoia and desperation of the family members causes them to turn upon one
another.
The film succeeds not as a traditional vehicle of
jump-scares and psychological pressures, but instead exudes a ceaseless feeling
of dread, like a nightmare that none of the characters can escape from and,
therefore, neither can we as the audience.
There are unquestionably paranormal circumstances fueling the family’s
self-destructive paranoia, but it is ultimately that paranoia that tears them
apart. It’s a slow, painful burn that is
hard to watch but impossible to look away from, in no small part due to some
excellent performances and attention to bleak historical detail.
And while it is probably hyperbolic to call the story a morality
play, there are definite overtures to the follies of religious extremism. The two oldest children are poorly equipped
to deal with their burgeoning sexuality in isolation from non-family members, and
William is a poor example of a patriarch, incapable of supporting his family
through hunt or agriculture, yet blaming his ineptitude on the will of the
devil and his servants. There is no
question that this family is doomed from the start; the only question is who is
to blame, and even with the film’s conceit of real creatures that go bump in
the night, the answer is obvious.
The Witch is a
thankfully short film, clocking in under ninety minutes in order to make its
point succinctly and leave you to ponder the gravity of what you just saw. The ending is likely to be polarizing, but I
think it works fine, even if it does leave some previous ambiguities a little
too well explained. But in the eighty
minutes preceding that, this is a tense, thought-provoking piece of
contemplative fiction that will stick with you for a long time. Terror doesn’t necessarily reside in what we
don’t understand or what lurks in the shadows; sometimes we understand all too
well what threatens us and can do little to stop it. That is a much more unsettling thought.
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