The Witch: A Review

Normally I would put this under my "31 (or so) Days of Terror" label, but that's exclusively for horror movies and I'm not sure The Witch is a horror movie. It has many horrific elements but the execution makes me reconsider that distinction. Its plot certainly sounds like something a more artistically inclined horror director would make, a family of Puritans in 17th Century New England find their isolated farm under siege from the titular witch and they eventually turn on each other, and director Robert Eggers delivers on that premise though in a way far more abstract than is typical or expected. And while I can appreciate the artistry and effort he & his crew put into the film, the end result didn't entirely jive for me the way it seems to for other critics.


As I said, those going into The Witch expecting a conventional period horror film are going to be severely disappointed. As the film unfolds, it at first seems to have more in common with the "people going crazy out in the wilderness" movies of Werner Herzog and Lars von Trier's Antichrist. Indeed, one of the film's greatest strengths is its sense of place and atmosphere. The naturalistic cinematography and claustrophobic location shooting immediately create a sense of isolation out in the cold near-winter forests of New England. So even though we're never shown much beyond the family's lonely farm, we the audience understand that they are miles from anyone else on the very edge of civilization. This quality makes the eventual paranoia of the characters feel more real, because we know that they really are stuck with each other and the excellent work of the actors makes it crystal clear this family is going to tear itself apart when left by its lonesome.

Thomasin (Anna Taylor-Joy) looking for her brother,
stolen by the witch in the woods.

If it weren't for the fact the witch is presented as unambiguously real at the beginning of the film, the film would play out like an incredibly shot Twilight Zone episode about how keeping secrets and sowing mistrust will ultimately lead to disaster. But the fact that the family drama works so well despite the involvement of the witch just leads to the film feeling oddly schizophrenic. Because the scenes with the actual witch work like gangbusters, and are probably the best in the whole movie. The witch herself is singularly creepy, along with her animal familiars, and Eggers & co. are smart to keep her mostly offscreen and suggest her through sounds and recurring visual motifs to heighten her creepy factor. These scenes also alternate between having the musical score overwhelm the audience while the action plays out in slow motion, or using silence and deliberately distanced framing to just send chills up the spine. The scenes involving the witch are also more conventional, despite their artistry, for this kind of film so that may be part of the reason I rate them so highly.

That's kind of my problem with The Witch in a nutshell. While both the drama of a Puritan family's faith and suspicion destroying them and the supernatural elements work on their own, they feel somewhat disconnected when put together. As though Eggers couldn't decide whether he wanted he wanted to do a straight historical drama with suggestions of the supernatural or a more historically accurate period witch movie, so he decided to do both but couldn't find a way to make them gel. In the end, I'm still not sure what to make of The Witch. Parts of it, mostly those involving the actual witch, I really enjoyed. And there's just too much obvious care and talent put into it for me to dismiss it. Overall,though the final product just didn't connect with me. I understand what Eggers was going for, and I can see why many were quick to sing the film's praises, but ultimately The Witch is a film I respect more than I like.

Final Score: 3/5