Review: The Witch

The Witch (15)

USA 2016 93 mins Dir: Robert Eggers Cast: Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Harvey Scrimshaw

A far richer experience than its somewhat glib trailer and poster would indicate, 17th century chiller The Witch is as much a compelling historical drama as it is a supernatural shocker. In fact, to describe it as a horror at all may be somewhat reductive: although the movie has broadly horrific trappings, the real terror derives from the way it makes the audience feel the neuroses and superstitions of its central characters. Like all great horror movies, director Robert Eggers’ accomplished debut feature is rooted in profoundly human emotion, as opposed to the fantastical.

The slowly impending air of doom is established right from the off where we see God-fearing Puritan farmer William (The Office’s Ralph Ineson) locked in bitter theological confrontation with his New England village elders. That Eggers initially shoots him from behind prevents us from getting a complete picture of William both in a physical and emotional sense; by contrast, his eldest daughter Thomasin (the hugely impressive Anya Taylor-Joy) is treated to a virginal, burgeoning close-up, a clear sign that she will become our audience surrogate as events unfold.

Having recently arrived on the boat from England in a misguided attempt to “tame” the vast American wilderness, William, his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), Thomasin and the rest of their children are cast out from the settlement to begin their lives afresh on the edge of a vast, forbidding wood. When not long afterwards the baby of the family disappears, paranoia and suspicion begin to rear their head: was the child taken by wolves from under Thomasin’s nose – or is there devilry at work? And as the bonds between the family become increasingly frayed, are they leaving themselves vulnerable to yet more evil?

Although The Witch unsurprisingly calls to mind texts such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, it very much stakes out its own creepy identity. As a consummately convincing portrait of a key period in American history the film rarely puts a foot wrong, utilising period authentic dialogue (derived from real-life sources), natural light and brilliantly detailed costumes to bring the era to life in all its muddy, slate-skied glory.

Through all aspects of the production, not to mention the finely honed performances, the movie brilliantly puts us in the mindset of these early settlers, unreconstructed folk whose absolute commitment to God and faith was the only thing keeping the Devil from knocking at the door. Yet at the same time, the movie plays the opposite card: where does one draw the line between devotion and indoctrination? Is the threat actually supernatural, or is it William and Katherine’s fanaticism that‘s putting the family in danger?

Accomplished as it is, the movie plays a tricky game in terms of what it wants to show us: a smattering of graphic visuals early on appear to literalise the source of the threat, but the skill of Eggers’ slow-burning direction is that we begin to question what we’ve seen just as the characters do. In fact, it’s only towards the end that things perhaps begin to become too explicit for their own good; for the most part, the really disturbing aspect of the narrative is the breakdown of the family (little wonder Eggers cites The Shining as a key influence). A throwaway witchcraft jest aimed by Thomasin at her seemingly demonic little sister eventually has horrific consequences; and the sexual awakening of both her and her cusp-of-adolescence brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) leads to some genuinely perturbing, Company of Wolves-style visuals, not to mention one of the most terrifying possession sequences in living memory.

Although the movie knows how to open the taps when it wants to (kudos to Eggers for making a seemingly innocuous goat, dubbed by the two youngest kids as ‘Black Philip’, into a genuinely threatening presence), the movie works first and foremost as a convincingly fraught depiction of a singular period in human history. It’s from the characters that the terror springs, not vice versa, and this only serves to make the impact more shattering. Little wonder Eggers has sub-titled the film A New England Folk Tale: this is not an exercise in jump scares catering for the Insidious crowd (although those movies have their place) but a far more troubling deconstruction of faith, ideology and psychological survival with strong literary roots.

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