Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Granger, Lucas Dawson
Screenplay: Robert Eggers
93 mins. Rated R for disturbing violent content and graphic nudity.
I was a little late getting into The Witch. It seemed that everyone was telling me how good it was but then they also tempered my expectations by warning me that the trailers were incorrectly marketing the film. So it was amazing but it isn’t the movie you have been following. How do I deal with that?
The Witch centers on a family. The patriarch, William (Ralph Ineson, Kingsman: The Secret Service, TV’s Absentia) has been banished from their plantation over a religious dispute. He, wife Katherine (Kate Dickie, Prometheus, TV’s One of Us), and their children begin the challenging work of building a farm and learning to subsist. When a horrific event rocks the family, they start believing that a witch is at work. Twins Mercy (Ellie Granger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) believe it to be oldest sister Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy, Split, Barry) but Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw, Oranges and Sunshine) defends her, but as the details and clues begin to add up, it becomes very clear that a dark force is involved, but who?
I would say the only major lie in The Witch’s marketing is that this film is not hinging on jump scares. It is a mood horror film, but it is exemplary. Every detail of the environment is so strong, you forget you are watching a film and fall right into it. Anya Taylor-Joy again proves that she is a capable lead and has an exciting career ahead of her. She is aided by character actors Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie who fit perfectly into the film. The casting is perfect, the tone and pacing are very nice (films such as this almost always tend to run on long, but The Witch is a tight 93 minutes), and the scares are visceral and moody, staying with you long after the end.
Like The Revenant, The Witch’s shoot is mostly natural light, and it shows in an excellent visual representation, shot in 1.66:1 no less. There’s just so much care put into each shot of the film. Everything is important, even if it doesn’t appear at the moment. There’s a scene into the film where everyone is reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and I didn’t think much of it, but then I saw an interview where someone had stated that, at the time, it was believed that a witch couldn’t recite the Lord’s Prayer fully. I looked back at the scene, and it all flowed together.
A large portion of The Witch is steeped in memory, legend, and history, and that may be why it feels so real. This is definitely a film to check out. I absolutely loved it, it is one of the best horror films in recent memory, a tough feat as horror has been riding such a high. Check out this one as soon as you can, but avoid the trailers.
4.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe
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