Disappointing

Rating: 2/10 (20 February 2016)

While there was one scene, early on in the film, of incredible terror, the balance of the film was entirely predictable, difficult artistically, and thematically set us back nearly 500 years in vilifying women and witches/ wiccans. While true to the hysterics of the time over anything the recent English immigrants could not understand and therefore labeled as evil, (the dense woods, disobedient women, breasts, etc.) artistically this film is a mess. Let's start with the overuse of blank screens for long seconds (minutes?) of time. This may have been intended to build suspense, especially with the use of fraught vocal music in the soundtrack, but it is used far too often, and the screen is kept blank too long, followed by- nothing! Apparently in this film, it's the equivalent of dropping a screen on stage while the actors change places or costumes. It could have been employed once or twice to great effect if the blank screen didn't last as long, (the viewer on my left mumbled "WTF?!" at the second or third use of this) and if it was followed by a surprise or shock to the viewer. Then there's the dialogue: approximately 25% of it, especially early in the film, is indecipherable and at different volumes. The elder son, Caleb, has a different (Cockney) accent than the rest of the family. OK, the Puritans were creepy in their singular devotion to The Bible, and living in and adapting to the apparently always dreary New England was a bit much for their imaginations. But why must women be portrayed always as The Shrew, The Temptress, or the Agent of Satan? I give this film 2 stars for its novel attempt to depict the life of early Puritan settlers in their uneducated, superstitious and hysterical ways. Otherwise, in all, I was mightily disappointed.