When I first heard about The Witch: A New England Folktale there were excited comments that this film was supposed to be the "scariest film of this year". I immediately felt less interested because I personally don't feel that anything should be described as the "best" of something until it has been experienced. While it might not have been the filmmakers fault that people immediately started labeling it as "the scariest" I just found it to be off-putting.
I briefly considered seeing this picture in theatres but ultimately changed my mind. I also considered purchasing the movie without watching it first when it was initially released on dvd but I changed my mind. I don't regret either decision that I made after watching this picture.
On its surface the plot of this film tells of how a Puritan family is banished out of the plantation due to the father William (played by Ralph Ineson) publicly disagreeing with the Church. His family include his wife Katherine (played by Kate Dickie), their oldest child and daughter Thomasin (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), their second oldest and oldest son Caleb (played by Harvey Scrimshaw), their two young fraternal twins Mercy (played by Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (played by Lucas Dawson), and their baby Samuel (played by twins Axtun Henry Dube and Athan Conrad Dube). They have a few animals including a dog, a horse, two nanny goats, and a billy goat named Black Phillip.
After leaving the Plantation, they try homesteading in an area located about a day's ride from the Plantation. The house is immediately surrounded by fields with a river nearby. The fields are bordered by dense forest.
Misfortunes start happening pretty quickly after they move to their new home. The trouble starts when Thomasin takes the baby to play hide and seek near for forest. While playing the baby disappears. Mind you, the baby is too young to crawl much less walk away so it is even more frightening and distressing to the family that the missing baby particularly goes missing in this manner. Thomasin apparently doesn't see or hear anyone or anything take the baby. The troubles escalate from there.
One of the very great things about this film is the many layers to it. As I said, on its surface its dealing with a family that is going through terrible misfortunes all due to the pride of the father in his refusal to recant or apologize for his speaking out thus putting his family in this predicament.
It also deals with personal changes in the form of Thomasin going from being a child to being "a woman" by Puritan standards. She is physically developing to the point where her brother Caleb finds himself physically attracted to her. Strangely her mother is aware of this behavior and Thomasin's encouraging the behavior by engaging in somewhat provocative behavior of her own around Caleb.
Then there is the trust between parent and child and how that can be so easily damaged by one word. While Thomasin was extraordinarily foolish to take her young brother to play near the woods, I'm sure that she wouldn't have deliberately endangered her young sibling or any of her family for that matter. But because Katherine can't full on blame Thomasin for the loss of the baby she attacks Thomasin in other ways about other things.
There is also the "very real supernatural" events that go on in this picture to contend with. How much is all in the imagination and how much is really happening? I have heard some speculate that Thomasin herself is in fact the witch.
This film has a great deal of food for thought. It seems to be one of those films where the more you watch it, the more details there are to take in. This film was superbly written. The acting was brilliant.
Wahab Chaudhry as Black Phillip's voice was one of the best parts because the way that he spoke the words was very much how I would imagine the devil might talk and sound. His voice had darkness but it was a kind of seductive darkness where the listener knows that the person talking to them is bad and that what the person is saying is bad but the listener finds that they don't care. The thought of hearing the voice gives me chills.
The "A New England Folktale" portion of the title of this film is very apt. This film reminded me of some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories. Robert Eggers did an excellent job capturing the feel of those kinds of stories (that might not have been the intention but either way it was excellent). If you are unfamiliar with that sort of literature and you are curious I would suggest reading from Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories or another author from that time period perhaps.
A couple of words of caution. First off the "horror" is very atmospheric. The person who initially showed me this film aptly compared it to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. So, if you are looking for typical horror or blood and guts, you might be disappointed. I definitely do not think that this is "the scariest" film of this year or any year for that matter. But it is still a good movie that I think is worth watching.
Second word of caution, the dialogue of this film is spoken in Puritan English. As in, if you aren't at least vaguely familiar with Puritan English you might not understand a word that people are saying. For example they don't say "banished" they say "banishe ed". "Thee" and "Thou" are frequently used. I would strongly advise turning on the subtitles when watching this picture both because of the Puritan English and also a goodly amount of the cast is British and Brits notoriously speak in lower volumes than American ears are used to (not a criticism just a fact).
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