Slow tale of the dissolution of a family

Rating: 8/10 (1 July 2016)

The movie starts with the banishment of a guy from a colony in America because he was too religious. What an asshole he must have been. Therefore he leaves with his entire family of wife and three children and a babe - plus several goats - to make a life of his own in an isolated cabin. When children start dying in mysterious circumstances, the family starts to break apart, while accusations and fear of witchcraft fly uncontrolled.
I loved this part of the story and I liked that the pace is slow and uncomfortable. Nothing really happens other than see backward people do backward things and then suffering for it, but the acting is good, the pain is transmitted well and you kind of understand how they get to where they're getting.
The part that I didn't like is that with all the setup, they had to introduce a few scenes with "the witch", which was absolutely superfluous. If they would have shown no witches and kept the viewer guessing, the impact would have been greater, I believe. Also, with a supernatural cause for everything the writer/director denies the viewer the choice of believing in God's salvation, in the possibility of controlling the situation by ordinary folk or of any hope for the ending. It's just like "Bambi meets Godzilla", the outcome is pretty much set. Add a slow pace to this and I am sure people will be upset of how nothing happens and when it does is inconsequential. Other than this one - important - detail, I liked the movie.
Therefore I urge you to tweak the story in your heads when you watch the film. Consider all witchy things hallucinations of the people involved. Then you will find some meaning in the whole thing.
P.S. for some reason I couldn't stop thinking of the video for KillSonik - Slaughterhouse, so that may have thrown me off a bit, too :)