Something lost along the way

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2016)

I have always preferred horror movies based around tension rather than gore or jump scares. When I first saw a trailer for The Witch it seemed like the perfect horror movie for me. The time period and setting are even enough to bring chills just thinking about it but I am sad to say that these are probably among the best features of this movie. The Witch fails in so many ways that I am having trouble remembering the few things in which it succeeds, and those few things are not nearly enough to save this disaster.
I don't want to make this review a list of things I hated about the movie followed by praise for Anya Taylor-Joy so I will begin with her performance. Really the only highlight of the movie, Anya Taylor-Joy brought the fear out of not only the terrible things happening, but also the feeling of being trapped as she was. Her character was the only one who I really felt for through the movie as all of the other characters were dis likable for the most part.
I guess I will start with the story and whatnot since that is probably my biggest complaint. The story goes nowhere. The plot seems to be a series of boring farm chores and deep prayer scattered with a few moments of fear. There was no sort of effort to make the story circular, or to really even bring many of the things brought up in the beginning to a satisfying conclusion. The old saying of "Don't show a gun in the first act if you aren't going to use it in the third" is disturbingly broken here. The worst part about the story is that it is not even innovative. The normal worn out horror genre format is here with the first hour of the movie being a crawl with a brief moment is horror splashed in. Then the last half hour aims to shock and disturb leaving the last 15 minutes for the real scares. The Witch does all of this poorly as none of the moments of tension hit nearly as hard as they think and the overall payoff is not clever or satisfying.
The direction of the movie is filled with close up reaction shots that most of the time amount to nothing. The camera will show a character horrified and then when the viewer finally gets to see what is so interesting it always ends up disappointing. There were absolutely no shots in this movie that were really impressive. The look of the movie actually was also impressive, but when juxtaposed with basic camera placement and movement it just offsets each other.
Good horror movies are a dime a dozen these days, but The Witch seemed like it had a good understanding of how to make a good one. Again the time period and subject are a wealth of entertainment for this genre but the makers of this movie got lost somewhere along the way. I would not recommend this to anyone other than people who really like horror/thriller movies just to let them have an opinion. In my opinion this one is an easy pass.