[REVIEW] The Witch

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By: Joe Jodoin

After its premier at the 2015 Sundance Festival, The Witch is finally out in theatres nationwide. I wasn’t looking forward to this movie very much, as I find most horror movies are poorly made in their reliance on jump scares, and have clichéd characters.

The Witch, however, completely blew me away. By relying on atmospheric horror, the film creates a depressing, unsettling environment that slowly builds tension and dread over its brisk 93-minute runtime.

The movie takes place in the 1630s, a time when people actually believed witches were real, and follows a family who is ostracized by their church and forced to make a life for themselves on the outskirts of a creepy forest. This proves to be a more difficult task than they thought, as all their crops mysteriously die, and their baby boy suddenly disappears into thin air. The family soon learns that a witch is behind their bad luck and they must find a way to survive its incredible torment.

The plot is very simple, but Robert Eggers’ direction is what makes it so special. The whole tone and atmosphere of the film makes watching it creepy, chilling, and quite unpleasant to watch at times. Be forwarned that this is not a movie that is “scary” in the typical sense of the word. It doesn’t make you scream or jump or be afraid to sleep at night. Instead, it just crawls under your skin and lingers on long after it ends.

Eggers also crafted the film with incredible attention to detail. All the sets, clothing and dialogue are accurate to the time period. A lot of the dialogue was actually taken from diaries and real life accounts of witches from the 1600s. This brought a realistic dimension to the story and made it very easy to become invested in the family’s wellbeing. However, the origins of the dialogue also made it difficult for a modern audience to fully comprehend it, which took away from my enjoyment of the film.

Despite that one flaw, The Witch has raised the bar for the modern horror genre. If more films followed suit, we could start to take the horror genre seriously once again. I would recommend watching The Witch if you want to finally see a film that subverts all horror clichés, while also presenting a dark and disturbing work of art.

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