A creepy, intelligent folk tale of 17th century American colonisation

Rating: 8/10 (24 March 2016)

Although directorially akin to British ethnographic horror movies such as The Wicker Man, The Witch is a distinctly American pastoral tale that sees a family exiled from their community due to religious differences and struggling to survive in a no-man's-land between civilization and the wild wood.
By using authentic-ish period dialogue, director Eggers recreates in his protagonist family a society steeped in the language and thought of The Bible. Alternating between piety and goat-poo, the family are repressed as much by language and thought as by an unyielding landscape and any supernatural menace the woodland may hold.
Parallels are drawn between the family's expulsion from their community and the Pilgrim Fathers' flight from religious intolerance. At one point England is evoked as paradise and the family seem to have entered Hell. So to some extent, this is a parable of colonial experience.
Eggers weaves a magic realist tale leaving most of the reveals to the final act. The witch is a creepy unnerving tale in which moments of dreaming and wakefulness, fantasy and 'fact' are not always clear. This world is lovingly concocted from old fairy tales and folk tales. It is unsurprising to find Eggers' subsequent work has included and adaptation of 'Hansel and Gretel'. Sometimes the symbolism is jarring – the inclusion of a woman in red hood, offering an apple to young son recalls tales of Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and, of course, the temptation of Eve but its in-your- face post-modernism wrenched me out of the fiction world. The Witch rarely strikes a bum note by eschewing cheap stunts like leaping cats, sudden crashes and musical startles.
Instead, the director opts for a disturbing ambiance that takes its cue from 'The Crucible' but actually delivers on the supernatural front. The cast - Ralph Ineson as father William, Kate Dickie as his wife and Anya Taylor-Joy, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainge, and Lucas Dawson - help draw the audience into the family's travails. It's a great ensemble cast. Harvey Scrimshaw puts in a gut wrenching performance as a young man seduced to the weird side by a stranger in the woods, while Taylor-Joy by turns loving, willful and afraid offers the emotional fulcrum around which the family revolves and finally dissolves.
This creepy tale may leave fans of mainstream horror scares disappointed but its scenes will stay with you long after you have left the cinema.