An unsettling atmosphere, a chilling musical score, and of course, lots and lots of screaming. These are the trademarks that typify pretty much any horror movie. But as of late, horror films have left out two key ingredients that make a horror movie a great one -- imagination and intelligence. Luckily, "The Witch" is a horror film brimming with intelligence and is all too eager to play with one’s imagination.
Directed by newcomer Robert Eggers, “The Witch” pitches itself as the new “New England Folktale” and it’s easy to see why. In the same vein as Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” the film centers around Puritan life and culture. Here, however, the focus is narrowed even further to just one family, a family that is banished from a village for sacrilege and forced to fend for itself in the wilderness. It's a pretty bad fate to suffer, but at least they have each other, right?! But when the baby of the family mysteriously disappears and more misery befalls them, the family’s fabric is spread dangerously thin.
Now, a movie titled "The Witch" would seem pretty incomplete without the appearance of a witch. There is a witch here, and the movie makes no pretense about it. She is seen within the first ten minutes of the film. Though this witch is a looming figure that hangs over the film, she is showcased for what seems to be but a few minutes of screen time. That’s because the film really is not about the witch. It's about the family, the turmoil that follows sudden loss, and the struggle to keep faith when things seem most dark.
The religious overtones of this film are really intriguing. To be fair, it’s hard to watch a film about the Puritans and not be sucked in by the severity of the Puritan religion. What “The Witch” does really well, however, is it doesn’t distance itself the religion and take a voyeuristic glance at it. The film fully involves itself in the Puritan life that it features, without ever indicting it. Instead, it focuses on the human aspects of religion and illustrates how a religion of shame affects the individual and how it plays a role in the family dynamic.
Overall, “The Witch” is a hard movie to categorize. It’s marketed as a horror film and there’s plenty of times you’ll want to cover your eyes, but it seems to be something more. To me, it seems like a drama that illustrates a family’s inability to connect to one another. At the same time, however, it’s a psychological thriller that chronicles the family’s descent into madness, brought about by grief. It’s a pretty unique film that’s self contained and has a simple plot, but it complicates the story we know just enough to make it really enticing.
