This movie is "Ye olde stupid!"

Rating: 6/10 (17 December 2016)

It seems that somebody in the elite artistic community wanted to launch a new type of horror movie - and so they made a historic horror movie. What would happen if a horror movie took place in a historic period of time before modern audiences - such as the woods of Salem in the colonial era? Where - there may or may not - be a witch.
The film is partly a historical look at life in this time period - and to make the historic elements seem real the movie is filmed without artificial light - just natural sunlight and candlelight. The dialogue is written from the time period - and that is pretty cool at first but it gets hard to manage as the film goes on.
However - the witch portion of the film (the most important part) goes from brilliant to less than masterful. Apparently you need to be well versed in the lore of the Salem witches - and in fairness I am not.
It seems there is a witch in the woods and I guess the witches want the heroine of the film to join them? Something to do with Satan and a chicken and a goat. I think that either the film needed to really explain the rules of the world of the witch or use more of the witches - but there was a huge gap in communication between the story and the audience that felt vexing.
A horror movie - by and large - if it is going to be successful - needs to have a scare that is viable to a majority of people and a premise that is marketable. Jaws makes us scared of water - and the shark is a cool monster. Paranormal Activity make us scared of our house after dark. Freddy make us scared to go to sleep. Michael Meyers reminds us that the boogie man is real.
Most of us do not have a viable connection to a Salem Witch - so it is hard for most of us to understand or care about that. But this film did make it into theaters with a small budget and it did generate enough sales to warrant it a big success so congratulations to those involved - and I am sure the next film from this filmmakers will be more viable to more audiences.