For the past few months, I’ve been anxiously waiting for "The Witch" to hit theaters. That's a telling sign because I'm not usually the one to see horror movies in theaters since I scare easily and want a blanket to cover my eyes with and the ability to fast forward if it's all too much. But I found myself following the movie as the release date came closer, and I couldn’t wait to buy it myself, I had to have answers as soon as possible.
Horror films get a bad rep usually. What I hear most often is either “It was so cheesy” or “There wasn’t enough blood." To be honest, I fall in the middle; I like a psychological thriller, and something to give a little color to the screen in a usually gray and black neutral setting, but not too much where I can never look at elevators the same way. I dig the possession films, but I can also go for a few choice seasons of American Horror Story.
My hopes were very high for Robert Eggers The Witch. It was familiar, yet different. Scary, but most of the time I couldn’t take my eyes away from the screen.
There are a few things I look for in a great film in general, and almost all of them were hit on after seeing it on opening night. First, is it believable; this may sound strange, but a horror film is only good if it makes you horrified, and usually you’re horrified based on other fears you have. I have to believe that this could happen, because everything is so real in this film. The Witch does that, and it should as the director spent four years going to museums about the era the movie takes place, which if you haven’t seen the trailer yet, is during the Puritan era.
First of all, I had no idea that there were even enough museums to visit for a year about such a specific, and let's be honest, a horrid reminder of history class. However, Eggers makes this setting not only fascinating, but you wonder if there should be more movies during this time, and if you should go back and read some more Nathaniel Hawthorne to see if there was a horror story you somehow missed.
Second of all, you can tell how much passion went into this film and why Eggers won U.S. Best Director Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival. After the movie, I was literally giddy talking about the film, I could not stop talking about how good it was, and how much detail here was in a film set in an environment where people demanded simplicity. The pre-credit epigraph states that all the dialogue written was based off of real letters, diaries and documents from the time, an even more telling sign of how much time and thought went into this film.
Another thing I look for in a great movie is the score. Like the horror film The Conjuring, the music in this film was incredibly effective in creating an unsettling tone for the audience. Every soundtrack sounded like the Witch herself crawling through the woods towards the audience, or that the story itself was a nightmare we were all sharing and couldn’t wake up from. Nails against a chalkboard strings and staccato whispers of music further enchanted the audience to keep looking, no matter how much you wanted to.
Of course, what is a great movie without a great plot line? The actual story, described in the subtitle of the film as “A New England Folktale”, is as twisted as it is equally thought provoking. Our characters are a family just banished from a plantation, a “commonwealth”. Off the family goes, just to the edge of a thick and menacing wood. Already a tense situation, the family’s first encounter with the darkness of the woods is the disappearance of the infant son, Samuel. While his fate is horrifying and disturbing, it may be merciful seeing as where the film goes.
This family is pretty messed up. A father who lets his children lie for him, a mother who cries pretty much all the time over her lost son, and a son who has a weird thing for the eldest, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), although to be fair, who else does this tween have to look at? Eggers plays on the audience’s fear of creepy twins, although the twins themselves are rather annoying, it's rather what happens to them is the scare factor. While I don’t particularly like the twins, their function is of historical accuracy and retelling of the Salem Witch trials. The way the events unfold, it eerily mirrors what happened during the accusations.
The only normal family member is Thomasin, a teenager who seems rather resentful of her situation and increasingly annoyed -as the rest of the audience are- with her youngest twin siblings. Many can probably relate to her, as many of us have all felt the burden of younger siblings that irk us to no end, and being the bearer of responsibility. Ironically, aside from the baby, she is the most innocent character of the film, and yet is still accused of being a witch by her family. Perhaps this is what causes the downfall of this family, and a lesson to be taken by the modern audience; repressing women, ostracizing them based on their gender, only spells the downfall for humanity.
When my boyfriend and I left the movie when it was finally done, he said to me, “You can tell it’s an indie movie”. While I don’t agree with this statement entirely, I will agree that there are some points that make this statement valid. For one, the film itself is a very organic piece. The actual set, the location the film was shot and the cinematography were all extremely organic in that they were made to be as accurate as possible to a time period that in of itself is very organic, when this world had just been “discovered” and settled. The lighting in the film is also historically accurate, and extremely natural, coming from natural light (which seemed to be very little) and candle light. The filming was also done well, with occasional awkward angles and pans that don’t sugar coat anything for the audience, and black outs that create an eerie suspense that feels may never be concluded.
The Witch accomplished what many other horror films have not: very sophisticatedly scared its audience without skimping on what many different kinds of horror fans want. From the dialogue to its actual horror story, the film leaves questions, and will have viewers wondering if they even want to know the answers, although here’s hoping that the question of whether we’ll see more from Robert Eggers in the near future is answered with “yes.”
"The Witch." The Witch. A24, 10 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
