The Witch

The Witch feels like a film from another planet, or better said, a media from a completely different time. While it accepts contemporary genre tropes and draws its surface tension from the popular formula of a group of people – a cabin, the surrounding forest, and a supernatural evil, internally it sharply defines what we consider common and therefore actually correct in modern horror. The plot focuses not on the true nature and character of the evil, but on the psyche and behaviour of its victims, which, hand in hand with their religious fanaticism, spreads the already terrifying threat into their own ranks, and the viewer can no longer be sure who is the victim and who is the hunter (as the scene with the dog and the rabbit makes clear). It's true that it's hard to sympathise with such irrational characters, but the painstaking work of evoking the period, the orders of life at the time and the Old English language itself add to the naturalism and authenticity in an overwhelming way, so that we actually feel like we're in another reality, even though we're told at the outset that the story is based on an old folk tale. Though the attempt at added historical value may hurt the expected horror content a bit, the formal side is flawless. Sudden edits matched with the hauntingly unmelodic music cut every scene precisely at its climactic moment, so that its effect cannot be diminished, while the setting is used to great effect thanks to slow camera runs and carefully staged shots, without any image that would feel cheap or predictable. We are not forced to be afraid, as we know in today's "scary" ghost stories, but the fear is omnipresent and insistent. In a nutshell: horror that is different, more honest, and better. 80% (26/03/2016)

After the trailer, I was hoping to be delighted by The Witch. In the end, it is only rather inconspicuously, mildly concerning because of the excess of religion and one established witchcraft cult in New England. The movie actually doesn’t contain anything innovative and so there is only one thing which can entice you. And that is the atmosphere. The atmosphere is definitely brutal, but it doesn’t make up the whole movie. Unfortunately. (25/05/2016)

Unique. It's as if the cameraman had been transported back several centuries in a time machine and filmed the feelings of a family in isolation in the middle of the dark woods. Everything is subordinated to these feelings of the time – the archaic language, the great piety that permeated every individual back then, the fear of the unknown, the fear even of the forest next to you, where evil, evil spirits and witches were believed to reside. Because faith in Christ and fear of the powers of hell was everything at that time, the whole film is permeated with pious talk, prayers and irrational behaviour, which – as it seems from the reviews here – the dull-witted population, without knowledge of the historical context and dumbed down by the mainstream, will not appreciate. The rest of us give it a thumbs up, because such period parables, where the author drew from written sources of the time, bringing to life the witch trials and the mindset of pious people, are a rarity in today's cinemas. It's just a shame about the overly suggestive ending, if the author had had the balls to drive it through the simple "psychosis" of one frightened family, I would applaud even more. And Anna Taylor-Joy? You’ll be hearing a lot about her, trust me! (30/07/2016)

The Witch is definitely not a typical horror film, if only because the viewer doesn't have much chance to get scared during it, but the film still offers some very rough scenes that will undoubtedly stick in many people's minds. The fact that the film is somehow lacking in scares is not entirely a bad thing, as I think that the aim here was more to build up the atmosphere of the time, which it did – from the gloomy production design, to the depressing music, to the performances (I was particularly impressed by the child roles). I have to admit that I might have expected a bit more from a film that has been graced with more than one praising review, but it's still worth a watch. In short, an unconventionally conceived horror film that benefits particularly from the degree of authenticity and the performances of the small cast. (08/04/2016)

Eggers has a brilliant way of building atmosphere. The Witch is thus an unobtrusively absorbing film that is completely devoid of cheap genre techniques and formalistic devices. Eggers captures the terror and awe on the part of the pilgrims coming from the world of god-fearing civilization to the world of the wilderness in the seventeenth century and facing psychological decay in a hopeless situation. But in addition to that, it makes viewers experience the same feelings. After the disturbingly relieving climax, you suddenly realise that you are totally wound up and that you never want to go to the petting zoo again. The upcoming The Lighthouse focuses on macho hierarchy and shapes its characters in relation to their pasts as something that they want to escape from. In his debut, The Witch, Eggers carefully maps the dynamics within a family that finds itself in a situation of existential distress, where the past conversely becomes both a delightful myth and a burden exacerbating their situation. Furthermore, Eggers brilliantly captures the essence of witchcraft as a bogeyman, a stigma and a form of liberating relief in a society bound by fanatical devotion to belief. (12/11/2021)