The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)

The debut film of writer/director Robert Eggers, The Witch got good notices at Sundance last year and received widespread theatrical distribution this February. As its subtitle A  New England Folktale suggests The Witch is a story distilled from the witch hysteria of 17th century puritan New England. Writer/director Eggers hails from that part of the country and grew up fascinated with the period and its mythos, subjects that he stated in a recent Vice interview are a more central passion for him then even filmmaking.

The plot (from Wikipeida): "In the 17th century, a man named William is excommunicated from a Puritan Christian plantation in New England alongside his family—wife Katherine, daughter Thomasin, son Caleb, and fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas—due to the crime of “prideful conceit." The family is exiled and build their new farm by a large forest. After several months, Katherine gives birth to her fifth child, Samuel. One day, while Thomasin is playing with Samuel, the baby vanishes."
Baby Samuel is in fact stolen by a witch living in the nearby woods who murders him as part of an occult ritual, or so it would appear but The Witch is far from a straightforward film. Even when the movie tells you something there is room for doubt, it is a hodge podge, a mix taken from actual period dialogue, folk traditions, and various other often conflicting sources mushed together to where your not really sure what's happening.

The movie is well cast and acted, the sets and costuming beautiful and seemingly authentic, it's a cinematic slow burn drenched in atmosphere and a unsettling sense of mood, yet at the end I wasn't completely sure what it was trying to tell me about witchcraft and the period. When I think about it now I don't think it was trying to say much of anything beyond 'isn't this a bunch of interesting stuff', and it is. Lead actress Anya Taylor-Joy who plays Thomasin ably anchors the piece, she's kind of haunting looking and watching the movie I thought she was quite a bit younger then she actually is, I think she has a real future in film. The rest of the cast is quite good as well, and cast no doubt in part because there faces really look like you'd expect 17th century puritans to look. This is certainly a different kind of horror movie then most that get released now days, its more scary by implication then anything, though there are a few good scares including a sequence early on that was uncomfortable to sit through. Obviously not for everybody its the most 'different' and moody period horror piece I've seen since probably The White Ribbon. ***