The Witch - a Minimal, Haunting, Thriller

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2019)

Horror movies, often associated with jumpscares, possessions and demons, can feel cheesy, attempting to scare the viewer at every turn. Unlike these films, Robert Eggers The Witch, instills fear in the audience with his depiction of an old witch, hidden in the woods and attempting to undermine the main characters. A concept simple in ideation, but in execution, Eggers knocks it out of the park with his minimalistic style and focus on the effects the witch has upon the mentality and outlook of the settlers.
Using the folklore from the 17th century, Eggers builds the story of a family of settlers, expelled from their religious plantation over a dispute. The family moves into a clearing far from the plantation and along the edge of the woods. Their family continues to grow as William (Ralph Ineson) and Kathrine (Kate Dickie) have yet another child to join their existing four children, the oldest being Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) followed by Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and their twins Mercy and Jonas (Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson). Thomasin is sent to watch the child while her family works around the home, during her game of Peek-a-boo with the baby, she opens her eyes, only to reveal the baby has vanished. The family is plagued by paranoia, the loss of their beloved child sends the family into a downward spiral, flinging accusations at each other, playing directly into the witch's hands. The witch slowly tears away at the family's bond and shreds the last strands of faith they had in their religion.
The minimalist approach Robert Eggers took to film this movie is one of the key reasons I can watch this movie over and over. Eggers took such a natural approach, only using the natural light from the sun and moon as well as candles to help reinforce the setting in the 17th century. The constant use of single subject frames and centered shots makes us viewers feel that our characters are all separated from one another, they have lost their connections to each other. The slow separation of the family grows as Thomasin is followed by a wave of misfortunes, she's the only one who knows the truth, but the family will never believe her after she let their newborn disappear.
Sound design, and particularly the musical score, in The Witch is terrifyingly magnificent. The witch uses the family's baby for a ritual, gruesomely churning the child into a gory mush, but as she's quickly using her staff to grind the child into a bloody paste, in fades a quick humming sound, playing at the same tempo she seems to be mashing with. These eerie stringed instruments fade in, as it slowly zooms in on the witch, the music slowly climbs and climbs in volume. The scene changes, but the sound of her pounding away continues as we see her rubbing the poor child's remains across her naked body. Choir singing starts to fill the scene as the sound continues to build in complexity, it grows and grows, aiming to reach a climax but never finding it as the screen goes black, the sound cuts, and we're thrust back into the lives of the family.
While this movie is certainly a fantastic example of horror without the overuse of clichÃ©s, It seems less scary than I expected it to be overall. It has a fantastic ability to build tension, but if they had been able to use the gore the same way it was used in a movie like Hereditary or even take notes from The Blair Witch Project with how they dealt with an unseen evil and using its violence to more effectively instill fear in the characters rather than just having gore with little impact.
Even with slight drawbacks, The Witch is still a paralyzing movie, mesmerizing the viewer and drawing them in with its fantastic approach to filmmaking and focus on building immense tension in simple spaces. It has such an emphasis on atmospheric pressure from the setting surrounding the family and kept me locked in my seat for the entire movie, anticipating each interaction and ultimately had me wanting to watch it again as the credits rolled.