Review: THE WITCH Is a Period Piece That Will Delight and Disturb You

I'm not someone who scares easily when it comes to horror. I'm pretty much immune to slashers, ghost films, you name it. Horror films are, in my opinion, the hardest genre to master. Most films spend more time setting up a scare or scaring you, and all the plot really does is set you up for the next scare. This leads to bland and mostly forgettable films that flourish in the trailer but flop in theaters. The Witch is not that by any means.

Let me start by telling you what The Witch is not. It's not a film that plays to its audience. These English settlers are speaking in English appropriate for the time, and if you believe the film, come from actual journal accounts of various settlers. The accents are thick ("yew nur nuttin Jon Snow" thick), and at times you will be required to play translator in your own mind to weave the much more complicated diction of these simple folk. Truth be told, I missed a couple lines, but overall it did not hinder my experience of the film.

What you may miss in dialogue is more than made up for in the film's setting. After all, witch or not, trying to survive in the early days of America was scary enough. There were ample times I thought to myself, "Man I'm glad I was born in this time period." I don't know if I could handle being the only family within 50 miles in the middle of the wilderness!

It won't be long into the film until you get your first unsettling feeling. A lot of this is credit to the score (which Nick covered a couple weeks back), which starts out as loud, but really anchors the film later on. The second big hitter is the unapologetic showing of sins. They really thrust some taboo stuff into your face that just twists the gut in a way that will throw you off your game a bit.

We've all sat through the film that is essentially serving you filler between the scary bits, and we've also seen the film that throws so much at you it's almost white noise by the time it's over. The unsettling and engaging nature of the story does a lot to keep this film moving between the more intense moments. At no point will you feel comfortable or bored unless you are absolutely trying to be.

Without revealing too much, the scary parts get brutal... but at the same time manage to hit the pit of your stomach that tells you something is wrong. It's amazing and agonizing at the same time. By film's end you'll feel upset, but satisfied, I promise.

And the goat? F*** that goat.

The biggest strength of this film is the acting. Imagining children being trained in classical English sounds like an impossible headache, but whomever did it deserves an award for the performance these kids put on. To single out Anya Taylor-Joy (even though she was great) is a disservice to every other actor who put a lot into making this seem like a legitimate look into the past.

That being said, I know the atypical horror buff, and I know that while some will truly appreciate it there will be the guy in the theater who will huff and puff and whine because apparently he didn't see the trailer and this wasn't the Freddy vs. Jason gore fest he was expecting. That's his fault, don't let him influence you. I wouldn't go so far to say it's an acquired taste, but it is a film very far from the current state of the Horror genre. 

I understand why Satanists like it so much.

I look forward to the future works of Robert Eggers, and he'll certainly be on my radar going forward!