The Witch: A New-England Folktale 🦛🦛🦛🦛 out of 🦛🦛🦛🦛 Commonly called The Witch the title card for this movie adds the subtitle: A New-England Folktale. It is an important distinction because first time writer/director Robert Eggers is telling the audience how to view the movie. This is something I didn’t realize until after I had finished. The result was that well I thoroughly enjoyed it I was puzzled by it's motivation and felt a little distanced from it. It was good and had outstanding production values and craftsmanship but once I grasped what I believe to be it’s motivation I started thinking it might be a masterpiece. Time and re-watching will tell that tale. Eggers who is hard core about authenticity uses bits of transcripts from the original American witch trials in his script which is set in 1600 New England. The movie concerns a family made up of Dad (Ralph Ineson), Mom (Kate Dickie), and children: protagonist Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), oldest brother (Harvey Scrimshaw), twin youngsters (Ellie Grainger) and (Lucas Dawson) and baby (Axtun Henry and Athan Conrad Dube). In the first scene the family gets booted from the local village for reasons not entirely clear but it becomes very clear that they are cliché dévot Puritan Christians. The title telegraphs that things are not going to go well for the family and they don't but what transpires is so completely traditional a horror movie and in retrospect, at the same time so creatively clever that again I find myself leaning towards calling this a masterpiece. I mentioned that Eggers is an authenticity nut and it does not stop at the dialogue. This movie looks so authentic it feels like you might be watching a documentary. The realism is what makes it scary because there are no jump out of the dark scenes here. Instead the movie is one long slow burn of mounting dread that the authenticity makes terrifyingly real. I read that Eggers and his crew not only consulted experts to get it right but even brought experts like a thatcher and a carpenter with replica 1600 period building experience to work on the sets. Mark Korven's original music, which is perfect at adding to the dread, is free of electronics. They shot the whole thing in natural light with the interiors lit by candles (Stanely Kubrick would be proud). They even cast in England to get the accents right. It was all worth it. I want to also praise the cast because they deserve it. The children are all excellent but it is Taylor-Joy in her star making role that you will remember best. She does a perfect job of being a Puritan while channeling teens of every era. Adult's will see something of their own teen years in Thomasin which makes the dread all the deeper. Less universally relatable and in their case the more chilling for it are familiar faces, Ineson as the ultimate Puritan father figure, right down to the normal corruption that is the human condition and Dickie as a Mother who might be going mad and if so, is justified in doing so. Eggers does a good job of not knocking Christianity itself well allowing the terrible thing that devotion without thought is to be on full display. The fact that the ending turns this completely on its head again brings me around the word masterpiece. Whatever The Witch's longevity the fact that it is a must see horror movie is not something that will be debated. I am a fringe horror fan with a preference for cerebral horror. This is cerebral and scary as Hell.
The movie that introduced us to Robbert Eggers and Anya Taylor-Joy
The movie that introduced us to Robbert…
The movie that introduced us to Robbert Eggers and Anya Taylor-Joy
The Witch: A New-England Folktale 🦛🦛🦛🦛 out of 🦛🦛🦛🦛 Commonly called The Witch the title card for this movie adds the subtitle: A New-England Folktale. It is an important distinction because first time writer/director Robert Eggers is telling the audience how to view the movie. This is something I didn’t realize until after I had finished. The result was that well I thoroughly enjoyed it I was puzzled by it's motivation and felt a little distanced from it. It was good and had outstanding production values and craftsmanship but once I grasped what I believe to be it’s motivation I started thinking it might be a masterpiece. Time and re-watching will tell that tale. Eggers who is hard core about authenticity uses bits of transcripts from the original American witch trials in his script which is set in 1600 New England. The movie concerns a family made up of Dad (Ralph Ineson), Mom (Kate Dickie), and children: protagonist Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), oldest brother (Harvey Scrimshaw), twin youngsters (Ellie Grainger) and (Lucas Dawson) and baby (Axtun Henry and Athan Conrad Dube). In the first scene the family gets booted from the local village for reasons not entirely clear but it becomes very clear that they are cliché dévot Puritan Christians. The title telegraphs that things are not going to go well for the family and they don't but what transpires is so completely traditional a horror movie and in retrospect, at the same time so creatively clever that again I find myself leaning towards calling this a masterpiece. I mentioned that Eggers is an authenticity nut and it does not stop at the dialogue. This movie looks so authentic it feels like you might be watching a documentary. The realism is what makes it scary because there are no jump out of the dark scenes here. Instead the movie is one long slow burn of mounting dread that the authenticity makes terrifyingly real. I read that Eggers and his crew not only consulted experts to get it right but even brought experts like a thatcher and a carpenter with replica 1600 period building experience to work on the sets. Mark Korven's original music, which is perfect at adding to the dread, is free of electronics. They shot the whole thing in natural light with the interiors lit by candles (Stanely Kubrick would be proud). They even cast in England to get the accents right. It was all worth it. I want to also praise the cast because they deserve it. The children are all excellent but it is Taylor-Joy in her star making role that you will remember best. She does a perfect job of being a Puritan while channeling teens of every era. Adult's will see something of their own teen years in Thomasin which makes the dread all the deeper. Less universally relatable and in their case the more chilling for it are familiar faces, Ineson as the ultimate Puritan father figure, right down to the normal corruption that is the human condition and Dickie as a Mother who might be going mad and if so, is justified in doing so. Eggers does a good job of not knocking Christianity itself well allowing the terrible thing that devotion without thought is to be on full display. The fact that the ending turns this completely on its head again brings me around the word masterpiece. Whatever The Witch's longevity the fact that it is a must see horror movie is not something that will be debated. I am a fringe horror fan with a preference for cerebral horror. This is cerebral and scary as Hell.