Review by Rachel C. Greninger, Red Carpet Report Entertainment Reporter follow her on Twitter @RachelOnTV
The Witch is set in 1600’s New England and is about an exiled puritan family living on a creepy ass farm where a series of unlucky events befall them and they immediately start turning on each other. There are a few things I noticed right off the bat. Firstly, no one in this movie really seems to care that the first kid went missing. Like Sam just vanishes…and no one bothers to look for him. So that made me question the sanity of the family from the start. Secondly, I’m pretty sure puritans are psychotic. There is something innately terrifying about any form of extremism. The music is one of the most effective things about this film. The whole film, there is something that is just not quite right… something unsettling. The notes are askew, the melodies off. It adds to the whole ominous atmosphere to The Witch. The screeches in the composition slightly remind me of the score of Suspiria.
There’s not your traditional jump scare scenarios so that makes watching it a different experience. It’s more like a slow uncomfortable feeling of impending doom. Like Thanksgiving dinner at your boyfriend’s house for the first time. You just wish you could excuse yourself from the whole ordeal because you know someone is going to make a bad choice.
Things I learned from The Witch. Don’t play hide and seek with your baby in New England woods. Although, I’m pretty sure the baby just went to vote in the New Hampshire primaries, but since they didn’t look for him I guess we will never know! Don’t screw with Black Phillip. He’s a evil pirate and he DGAF.
Also, I’m pretty sure that character of the mother, Katherine, was based on my real life step-mother. This is one of the most terrifying aspects of the movie. Everything is about Katherine! Her son is dying and she just decides to rant, for what feels like an eternity, about how bad she feels that she didn’t look for her first son Samuel when he went missing.
Things also would have been better for the family if they just let the twins run wild into the woods. The twins are the worst. Trust me. Just the worst. Their screams are worse than the several naked old lady shots that are suddenly thrust on the screen. Though, I do find it effective, very room 237 from The Shining.
I was a little disappointed in the lack of projectile vomiting. I mean there are some prime sick kid bed scenes where vomit would have worked.
Overall acting is great, the score is effective, and the ending is fitting. I just wish that there was more of a payoff throughout the movie. The middle seems to lag with heavy dialogue and not nearly enough tension being built. The practical effects are subtle and well done so they are not distracting. Which is hard to do in a horror film.
I don’t love it as much as I thought I would, but I enjoy it more than most.
Grade: B- (With extra points for old lady nudity, and evil farm animals)
About “The Witch”
New England, 1630. Upon threat of banishment by the church, an English farmer leaves his colonial plantation, relocating his wife and five children to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest – within which lurks an unknown evil. Strange and unsettling things begin to happen almost immediately – animals turn malevolent, crops fail, and one child disappears as another becomes seemingly possessed by an evil spirit. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, family members accuse teenage daughter Thomasin of witchcraft, charges she adamantly denies. As circumstances grow more treacherous, each family member’s faith, loyalty and love become tested in shocking and unforgettable ways.
Writer/director Robert Eggers’ debut feature, which premiered to great acclaim at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival – winning the Best Director Prize in the U.S. Narrative Competition – painstakingly recreates a God-fearing New England decades before the 1692 Salem witch trials, in which religious convictions tragically turned to mass hysteria. Told through the eyes of the adolescent Thomasin – in a star-making turn by newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy – and supported by mesmerizing camera work and a powerful musical score, THE WITCH is a chilling and groundbreaking new take on the genre.
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DIRECTED & WRITTEN BY: Robert Eggers
STARRING: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson
RELEASE DATE: February 19, 2016
www.EvilTakesManyForms.com
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