Well Crafted and Acted but Unrewarding in the End

Rating: 5/10 (6 March 2016)

The Witch manages to waste some of the best acting and cinematography seen in a horror movie. The entire cast is outstanding and truly convincing in their roles, even the young children. The film is directed, from a technical perspective, in superb fashion as the audience cannot help but be absorbed into its darkness and desperation. The problem is that The Witch spends its entire run time setting up for a climax that doesn't really come. The audience is left hanging with no perspective. The ending is so weak that it renders everything that happened earlier as irrelevant. This is primarily because the film takes the audience exactly where we thought it was taking us from the beginning. There are no surprises, no real twists and the whole package is just a well-produced disappointment.