Meh

Rating: 5/10 (19 August 2018)

Acting, dialogue, sets, cinematography, and editing were all great. One star given for each of those, so 5/10, but the entire plot is awful, and i cant go any higher than that.
I was not expecting or hoping for a super scary horror movie, so thats not why I dont like it. It is very intense, but its really stupid and by the end, just became goofy.
So as we all know, witches arent real, and the religious persecution of women believed to be witches is a result of cult-like think and fear and possibly mental illness of those who chose to claim they were witches. This movie, however, asserts that witches are 100% real.
Okay.. so lets suspend our disbelief. It is no longer the real world but a world where actual satanic witches who act through satan with magical evil powers exist. Even once you accept that, the behavior of Thomassin is still completely illogical.
It turns out she was right that the goat was satan. She sees her whole family possessed and killed and kills her own mother in self defense.
So she then decides to join the witches.
What???
She wasn't a witch the whole movie. We saw that. We see it through Thomassin's own eyes. We saw that she didn't harm the baby - an actual witch did. She didn't harm Caleb - an actual witch did. She was an innocent party, not possessed, and instead was trying to help her family. Then suddenly at the recognition that her whole family was dead, she decides to join them and they all float in the air naked around a fire.
I dont think that this young girl who was very plainly asserted to us to be a loving, faithful daughter who was wrongly blamed for someone else's wrongdoings would suddenly join the witches at the end.
So if she actually was a witch throughout the whole movie, as it sometimes is suggested, then they shouldve made it more clear to Thomassin herself. If she noticed herself becoming evil, tried to fight it, but eventually embraced it, then thatd explain her actions. But that didnt happen. She felt innocent, she was innocent and knew it of herself, but she still became evil. Dumb.
Also i would've liked more backstory on the witches themselves and a deeper insight into who they are, where they came from, and why they followed this path.
Personally I think a movie with a similar tone but instead set in the real world wouldve been better. Instead of actual real witches, the family descends into madness and accuses each other of evil until they are all dead from paranoia and anger. Not some floating naked women and a goat. Or at LEAST if theyre going to choose the supernatural path, make it where Thomassin's actions fit within normal human behavior and not just random. It seemed like they didnt know how to end it any other way.
It just felt silly to me.