'The Witch' Review: A beautiful descent into madness

The Witch does not feel like a movie that was made by a human being. It’s as if the film reel itself is the physical manifestation of evil and should be handed over to the proper authorities rather than screened in theaters. Though it moves along at a slow pace, director Robert Eggers still does not allow for one single moment of comfort. Like The Babadook and It Follows, The Witch is heavy on atmosphere and light on story, but patient viewers will be in for a reward. If you can call it a reward.

The title card for The Witch reads The Witch: A New England Folktale, and that’s appropriate considering it plays out like a story told over a crackling fire, and a story told by Puritans for Puritans. Set in the 17th century, Eggers' film follows a deeply religious family cast out of their New England plantation. Their desperation is palpable right from the start; these people have nowhere to go and must build a life for themselves from scratch in a world where everything seems to be out to get them, including each other. After settling into a new farm, things take a turn for the worse when the family’s youngest child is kidnapped by a mysterious entity. The title might offer a clue.

The rest of the movie is essentially a 1600's version of The Shining, complete with events starting off relatively calmly but then spiraling out of control and descending into madness with virtually no time to catch your breath. The evil surrounding these characters is overwhelming and inescapable, and confining the audience to one location with only a few protagonists results in a tale that is disturbingly claustrophobic. We are witnesses to the utter destruction of lives to sinister, unexplainable forces, and there’s nothing we can do but watch. To leave the theater as the credits roll is to finally escape the clutches of a nefarious spirit.

Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is beautiful and haunting, helping to build the paranoia as much as anything else. Every frame of The Witch is thoughtfully composed, and without any dialogue, imminent terror comes across in a simple shot. A simple shot of a rabbit, no less, which is somehow terrifying here. And the filmmakers trust you to understand the connection between rabbits and witches. The score by Mark Korven plays a vital part in building the tension, as well, and it may go down as one of the greatest horror scores of all time, assuming Korven himself actually composed it and didn’t simply recover a CD from the depths of hell. It’s difficult to imagine the state of mind one has to find oneself in to create something like this.

From a production standpoint, the authenticity on display in The Witch is extraordinary. This does not at all look like a period piece. It looks and sounds like Robert Eggers went back in time and filmed this thing in the 17th century, pointing his camera at the drama that was already playing out. Characters speak in dialogue evidently taken from actual diaries and court documents from the time, and Blaschke utilizes natural lighting so we’re never conscious that we’re on a movie set. When all hell breaks loose, it's effective because everything has been so grounded, and we are as confused by this curse as the characters are. We don’t sense the presence of a filmmaker telling us a story because things often just happen with virtually no explanation, but these people don’t understand why or how this evil has taken control of their lives, so why should we? 

This all comes with a caveat, though: The Witch is not exactly scary in the traditional way you might expect. There is not a single jump scare the entire time, which is virtually unheard of in horror these days. As a result, some viewers who have grown accustomed to movies that startle rather than unsettle may find The Witch to be ineffective and boring, but Eggers just isn’t interested in making his audience jump out of their seats. It’s more about drawing them into a well-written story and then making them feel dread build and build until the atmosphere is unbearably bleak, and in that way, the film is a massive success. You won’t scream while watching it, but you may just check the backseat of your car on the way home.

And even if you walk out of the theater unaffected, The Witch is still rewarding as a compelling drama. Heavy on character development and on metaphor, again like The Babadook and It Follows, the film speaks to issues of unhealthy family environments, repressed sexuality and female empowerment, building up to the rare horror ending which is not a cop out but instead is the clear culmination of everything that came before. Each of these performers holds their own, especially the two child leads, Anya Taylor-Joy and Harvey Scrimshaw. Hopefully the studio paid for the therapy that was presumably called for after working on this film.

If there are issues with The Witch, they mainly come down to what’s not on screen rather than what is. The film is under 90 minutes long without credits, and considering how engaging the characters are, it would have been nice to have some extra time with them. The last act, though mostly satisfying, is also just ever-so-slightly rushed, so a few extra minutes would have worked wonders. A key decision made in the final moments may elicit confusion rather than catharsis as a result. Considering the lethargic nature of Eggers’ picture, the studio may have been wary of approaching the two hour mark, but it says a lot about The Witch that the main issue is we’re left wanting more.

The Witch is a magnificent film, then, assuming one goes in with the proper expectations. Over the next few weeks, viewers who flock to the cinema hoping to scream their lungs out will walk out declaring it tedious, pretentious and not scary, and backlash will inevitably follow once the hype dies down. But if you’re in the mood for a subtle horror film that emphasizes atmosphere over cheap jolts, that cares about its characters, that tells a unique story and that will have a lasting impact on your psyche, The Witch delivers. Keep an eye on Robert Eggers because considering this is what he was able to accomplish as his very first film, this guy is going to do great things.