The Witch

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)

When the movie is over and I feel like seeing it again as soon as possible, that's a good thing. What does it matter that the film has an almost unbearably oppressive atmosphere, the fanatical people are portrayed so mercilessly and without turning a blind eye that perhaps only our own Witchhammer has managed to do so far, and that you almost hate to watch it all because it is so full of hopelessness. The Witch is just so engaging that, despite all the horrors, I wondered what would happen next, and I kept hoping that at least some of the characters would come to their senses. The ending, unlike many other users, didn't ruin the experience for me, although I thought for a long time about whether it was a good thing that it was so literal or not. Truth be told, after the intense harrowing experience of the previous eighty minutes, it was enough for me that there was an ending. (24/05/2016)

These a few dozens of seconds were completely unnecessary, without them it could have been the best horror of recent years. But we cannot do anything about it and their presence is even a bigger letdown because the problem is not what they show but how. Anyway, otherwise it is pretty good. You can find here everything what a real old school horror movie should contain; disturbing atmosphere, graduating psycho tension within a closed community (in this case a family in the middle of the woods), exposing carefully written characters, fears, evil and prejudices hidden in us, disturbing scenes... I am completely happy about that; especially when you add the impressive camera à la Dutch masters and acting performances of the whole family, which are worth highlighting, including the children. I can't remember when four children played such a complicated characters so well. Perhaps Eggers will make more horror movies, because a similar approach to this genre has been missing in recent years. (12/07/2015)

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)

The Witch is a return to the foundations of the genre, whose cinematic form crystallized in the 1930s, thus a return to careful work with atmosphere. We can observe a gradual uncertainty and loss of support shaping the spiritual and physical world of immigrants to the New World in the 17th century. Suffering leads to the breakdown of the family, which we tend to consider as the basic building block of society. At that time, the community was most important. Outside of it, there was only struggling and in the long run, zero chance of survival in the wilderness. The key to the film is the opening scene of excommunication from the church and the community, the cruelest possible punishment, harsher than the death penalty. What follows is a logical descent into darkness and ruin. Just as shamanic magical rituals are a reality for tribal natural cultures, witches are a reality for people shaped by beliefs and early modern religion. The clash of devoutness, the depth of which secularized Europeans cannot imagine tainted by science and modern technology, with freethinking and hedonism of sinners, is precisely what makes the film so impressive. The Witch is not a flashy and expensive film, but it is meticulously shot with knowledge of the subject and awareness of what the filmmaker wants to achieve, and last but not least, it is characterized by a refined sense of detail. Some of the popcorn-eating viewers may feel deprived of some jumpscares, but for me, the film is an exemplary example of what a horror film should be, and if Eggers had refrained from a too unambiguous interpretation of events at the end, the film could have received a perfect score. Overall impression: 85%. (31/12/2021)